In and Out of Focus
by Harbinger Loki
Summary: Six years since the sennen items were swallowed by the earth and with everything in her life going regular enough, Anzu Mazaki didn't think she would ever run into another sennen item, let alone the Thief King. This time though, the Thief King is different. Listless and with no purpose, Bakura and Anzu come to a middle ground where everything goes in and out of focus.
1. Susurrus

In and Out of Focus

Part I: Susurrus

LLLLL

"Your reflection is a blur

Out of focus

But in confusion

The frames are suddenly burnt

And in the end of a roll of illusion

A ghost waiting its turn

Now I can see right through

It's a warning that nobody heard

It will teach you to love what you're afraid of,"

-Jack Johnson, _"Hope"_

LLLLL

In the end, darkness had consumed him under the earth. In the end of all the card duels, the end of all the going back and forth between Pharaoh and Thief King, there was a nothingness left to the one who lost against Atem. Those who had seen the temple crash, who had been there for the duel of Atem and Bakura as well, did not ever think that Bakura, Thief King of Egypt, would be back, especially since all the sennen items had fallen down into a chasm no one think had a bottom to it.

No one had thought to put a sign up to say 'No Spelunking' though.

LLLLL

It was strange to awaken to the nothing that he was in. If Bakura really thought about it, he was aware of himself but knew that he was different, very different from before he was trapped here, wherever here was. He wasn't as angry as he once was, filled with the intense desire to kill and destroy and to take. He was also supposed to be in whatever destructive tormented afterlife that sinners were supposed to be in, but there were quite a number of things he didn't really want to think about. In fact, being denied the afterlife into his current state of being only made him frustrated and being frustrated only amounted to being able to do nothing about it.

He just was. He was in the void, empty of anything but him.

The Thief King supposed being stuck in the darkness should be normal to him. He was asleep for almost three thousand years, but during that time he had awakened only briefly in those who had managed to get their fingers on his sennen ring, and even then Shadi had usually managed to get the sennen ring back fairly quickly.

Maybe this was the afterlife, nothing more than the dark depths of blackest pitch around him. No body to hold him and only his mind left to wander. He could think, he sometimes felt like he was breathing but he knew it was only his spirit. He had tried to use his powers to send himself through the shadows but it seemed that ability had disappeared from him as did many others.

Perhaps he was dead, truly for once. He grasped once more with his mind throughout the empty void, but there was nothing. No power, no essence of something else. He was alone, stuck without the power of Zorc or the power of the sennen ring that he had once been able to use like second thought.

Somehow, innately knowing there was no way he knew how to fight the long amount of loneliness and emptiness around him just yet, Bakura was slowly accepting the fact that perhaps he was dead, perhaps this was all that was left in the farce that he called life.

For the first time, he accepted something he didn't know how to change.

LLLLL

"Wow! I can't believe it! Look at this, Terra! I bet we could sell it for a whole bunch of money." The voices were under water, bubbling and incoherent at first. He sensed there was someone there, a presence. Two, in fact. Bakura could feel hope slowly rise inside of him, but hope for what? He had no way of knowing what was going to happen, nor if the ring was being picked out from wherever it was that it had landed.

"Is it the only thing down here?" He was pulled, completely out of nowhere, disorientated and confused for a second as he could see other people. There was a girl holding the sennen ring in her grasp, idly tracing the hieroglyphs on the golden item. The person beside her, holding some sort of machine in his hand nodded to her. Terra, Bakura could guess, was the woman and despite her holding the sennen ring, the ring spirit knew he didn't want her to see him.

"Yeah, I can't find any others like it. The detector's not going off." The man, bent over the machine in his hand, frowns, aiming the device around the area. There is water every where and dirt. Bakura doesn't know how long it's been. It feels like the cobwebs are clearing from his once-quiet mind, albeit slowly.

"Maybe it's fake." Bakura felt slightly affronted at that assumption. The ring and the other sennen items were all made from the souls of his village. He watched the two with suspicion. Was there a reason they had come to find the sennen ring? Were they just exploring or being deliberate?

"Nah, I think it's real and if not, we can still sell it for a lot. I'm betting you there's some nut that would want this." Bakura frowned. Despite the immense feeling of lethargy still plaguing him, he did not want to be sold off with the ring like a common household appliance. The two people shrugged before jumping back into the water with their equipment. Bakura did not linger long, disappearing back into nothing just as quickly as he was pulled into his phantom existence.

LLLLL

"I think you have the wrong phone number." A slammed receiver nearly fell off it's hook as Anzu Mazaki took calming breaths from her pink-cheeked face. The brunette heaved a sigh as soon as she felt fully calm from the infuriating phone call she had answered.

"Another one?" A sultry voice piped out from behind the brunette. With a soft apology on her lips, the brunette turned from her wall phone to the bar by her kitchen. If anyone asked so many years ago when she had first met Mai, the blonde duelist sitting at her bar, on whether or not they would wind up being such good friends, Anzu would have laughed at the person asking. She couldn't say the same if they meant now. Mai Katsuya was one of the only women that Anzu was friends with outside of her profession as a dancer. She was frank, honest when it came down to things, and particularly strong-willed enough to be a good contestant against Anzu's stubbornness.

"Yeah. I mean, I know Yugi and all, but this amount of paparazzi? It's silly. I'm just a friend of his." Mai snorted, drinking some of her strawberry-orange water that was a cleanser for the newest diet she was on. Anzu mused on the phone call, appreciative of Mai listening to her. This had been one of many from people who had found out her privately listed phone number and all of them asking the same thing. All of them asking if Anzu was his wife or mistress.

"Oh, they're just trying to create scandal on him, Anzu. Don't mind it too much." Anzu knew Mai's words were the truth. Yugi certainly did not help things either. Sometimes, when her best friend was asked about anyone special in his life in his after-game interviews, he had mentioned Anzu and his girlfriend, Rebecca Hopkins. The rumor-mill of the gaming world went off with possibilities at the first mention, but now it seemed Anzu typically received them more and more on his national gaming tours versus the international ones.

"Mai, I wish I had your grace dealing with things like this." The blonde only shook her head as Anzu went back into the kitchen to finish up on the soup that was boiling on the stove top that she had been interrupted from. Mai smiled as she watched her friend before speaking in her sultry voice.

"I've been a good duelist for some part of my life. Being able to slide the spotlight off of me when I need to was something I learned a long while ago." DING! Anzu grumbled, grabbing a potholder and pulling down the oven door to see whether or not her biscuits had fully risen. They hadn't.

"What about Shizuka and Jonouchi?" She placed the pot holder on the counter before glancing up at the watchful blonde who's lazy smirk on her painted lips could make Anzu envious. Mai leaned over the edge of the bar counter to pick up the timer and set five minutes on it.

"Shizuka? She's never really brought out into it as much. Otogi is a ham so she doesn't mind. My husband on the other hand..." The blonde sat down from leaning over with a huff. The thought of Jonouchi Katsuya only made Mai smile ruefully. He was a great Duel Monsters player and he made sure to provide for both her and their small five year old daughter, Reina, but his temper was still sometimes an issue."He gets angry when they involve Reina. He thinks she's too young."

Anzu could only nod. In the six years since they all mostly had graduated and the sennen items had been lost to the earth, her friends had excelled wonderfully in their chosen fields. Marriage somehow suited Mai in a way that the brunette hadn't thought about so many years ago. She was calmer now, though still almost as prideful as she had been.

"Hmm, it looks like I have to go. You'll come to dinner tonight, right?" Mai stood up from her seat, momentarily leaning down to grab her bags. She reached for her sunglasses on top of her blonde hair, pulling them down to her nose to hide her eyes.

"No, I really should get going. I promised Yugi's grandfather that I would come by with some soup." Anzu waved off the invitation, giving Mai an explanation. She smiled sheepishly to her friend as Mai's visage only became troubled at the mention of Sugeroku. It was known within their circle of friends that Yugi's grandfather was ill, having been in the hospital off and on in the last year alone. Yugi's competition money had been used mostly for the hospital bills. Recently, Sugeroku had been on the rise in his health, feeling well enough to have a day nurse come two days a week at his home above the arcade.

"He's not doing too well, is he?" The last Mai had heard was that he was in the hospital and Yugi was beside himself again. His mother had even come to stay to help Yugi with his grandfather's weakened disposition. Jonouchi and Yugi didn't really talk about what was going on with Sugeroku's health. It wasn't that it was taboo as far as Mai saw but that for Yugi, to even have the faintest idea of his grandfather dying, was really too hard to speak of.

"Well...I don't want to jinx him...Yugi's not taking it well." Sighing, Anzu nodded to her friend. It was something she didn't like to admit. Yugi had confided in her before he left for his most recent tournament in Kyoto, a day or so ago. He had wanted Anzu to be prepared in the worst case as his mother had left already and without anyone, Anzu was the closest Sugeroku Mutou had to family. Her best friend had cried as he left, knowing that he had to win in the tournament in Kyoto to pay for the most recent hospital bill.

"What about in a week or so?" Mai moved to the entry way, gathering her purple cork-heeled sandals to put on. She peered up at the brunette who had come out to see her off.

"I'm not sure if I'll have much time. I will be going to London in two weeks. There's a few plays there that I'm going to audition for before heading to New York City and auditioning there as well." Anzu gave Mai an apologetic smile along with a sheepish shrug. She wasn't blowing off her friend, but it was true that with all of the troubles of Sugeroku's health and her yearly trips right around the corner, Anzu was busy.

"Staying with Ryou then?" At the mention of Ryou, Anzu stiffened visibly. She knew what Mai was trying to get at. Ryou and her had a steady friendship that flourished better than the others, but it was mostly due to Anzu understanding that Ryou needed her there, not in his business like Yugi, Jonouchi, and Honda would be. He needed someone to wait, to let him come to them instead. The first two years after graduation, he had tried to stay in Domino City, but with his friends constantly coming over while he was trying to heal, not understanding that he was lashing out due to his frustrations with himself had strained their friendships. Anzu, though, had let him lash out at her and simply let him know that she would be there if he needed her to be. Ryou had thanked her for the simple gesture.

When his father asked him to take care of the flat in London, Ryou had debated on what to, but at Anzu's advice, he chose to go back to London, to start his life with a renewed breath, to put the past in Japan, at least until he was ready to face the terrible things that had happened due to the dark spirit from the ring. It was there that he started going to therapy and relaxing himself from the past that he had in Domino City.

"He's offered me a place there." With a frown towards Mai, Anzu finally let the cat out of the proverbial bag. It was a few years ago, after Ryou had moved back to London that he had mentioned it in an email that he wouldn't mind hosting her for a tiny bit. At the time, Anzu had been in a ballet company and was contracted to work the season in Tokyo and was unable to take him up on the offer. The story was different now. Seto and Mokuba Kaiba became her patrons and she performed with different companies under their name. She regularly made the trip to London and New York City on a yearly basis for auditions for the ballets to be done for the next season.

"Aren't you two just the coziest peas in a pod?" Mai appraised the brunette with a wicked smirk upon her lips. Anzu squirmed at the implication of her friend's comment. It was likely innocent but it was the truth that as far as Mai knew, Anzu didn't date or if she had, it was nothing noteworthy to have talked with the blonde about.

"Mai...I can't...Ryou?" Anzu's voice was soft as she questioned the possibility of her and Ryou crossing that strange boundary of friend and more than friends. It was an uneasy thought. She never had really given Ryou a passing thought romantically. The light-haired boy was too much like a younger sibling, one she looked out for when she could.

"I'm teasing. Let a married woman enjoy the thrill of possible romance through her friends." Mai interrupted her thoughts, waving her hand in playfulness. Her chirping giggle echoing between them.

"Still, Ryou is as celibate as a nun." Anzu reasoned quietly. In the entire time that she had known Ryou, especially after he moved to London and emailed her weekly about what was going on, he had never mentioned a special someone or even trying to go out and date. He mentioned more than once that he preferred simply writing for his job and going out for a walk with his German Shepard, Ramses.

"What if he made a move?" Her blonde friend raised an eyebrow in curiosity. Mai was truly concerned at the possibility. It wasn't that she wanted Anzu and Ryou to get with one another just to do so, but it was always a wandering idea. To Mai, Anzu needed someone to take care of, to be there for as she was for her friends, but Ryou needed someone to understand him and let him be when he needed it which as she could see, Anzu already did for him.

"...I'm..." Hesitant at even thinking about what would happen if Ryou asked her, Anzu fumbled for an answer to satisfy Mai who rarely took no answer as an actual answer. The blonde sighed loudly at Anzu's reticence.

"Just think about it, Anzu. Not like the world's ending on your answer." Mai's hand rested comfortingly on the brunette's shoulder, squeezing once before letting go. The blonde waved that same hand good bye as she left. Once the door closed behind Mai's departure, Anzu stood there. She wouldn't know how to respond to Ryou's romantic overtures. Likely, she would try to be upfront but seeing Ryou crumble before her was a certainty. Losing his friendship, something that was hard won, would be terrible and she honestly didn't want to lose it. The closed door had no answers for her as she stared at it. It wasn't until she heard the timer in the kitchen go off that she turned away from the door to check the stove top for her soup.

LLLL

Smiling at the sound of the door opening, Anzu looks over to the entryway from the top of the stairs to see who it is. For a moment, the dancer is annoyed to see Yugi's fiance at the bottom of the stairs. The blonde straight-haired American woman that her best friend is in love with is a hassle to handle some days. She's more straight-forward than most Americans that Anzu has had to deal with in her lifetime as a dancer. It unbalances her but she supposes for Yugi, that balances him. Where Rebecca is loud, he is soft. She is brash while he soothes, but for Anzu, Rebecca Hawking is jarring and unapologetic about it.

"Rebecca, how was the American tournament?"Choosing to ignore the annoyance from seeing Rebecca, not her best friend whom she was expecting to come home, Anzu called out to her in greeting.

"I won, of course. I'm glad I got back in time though. Yugi has been worried about his grandfather." Rebecca grinned widely as her name was called out. She adjusts her crimson cat-framed glasses upon her face. She moves to put on her house slippers, something Sugeroku was insistent upon when she first came to live with Yugi and Sugeroku. Seeing Anzu when she came back instead of Yugi first was only a slight damper. Her and Anzu weren't the best of friends, never had been. She doubted they would be better than what they were.

"Yugi should be on his way home from Kyoto soon, that is if he and Kaiba aren't in another one of their stalemates." Anzu moved from the top of the stairwell, into the kitchen nearby. Coming up to the second floor, Rebecca watched her old rival with a critical eye. The dancer was putting aside some food into Tupperware containers.

"Waiting for him?" Rebecca tested Yugi's best friend warily. It was a known fact to the American duelist that Yugi had harbored a crush upon his best friend, but Anzu's feelings about possibly even wanting more never came up. She never spoke of it and Rebecca had never heard any talk from Jonouchi or Honda about it.

"No. His grandfather likes the soups I make. I thought it might help him gain a little strength." Anzu smiled gently as she started making labels with the masking tape for each Tupperware container, putting the dates on them for Yugi and the nurse so that Sugeroku would have food ready for him to eat.

"Hey, Anzu." Rebecca watched her work. Her bright green eyes drawn to the date that she wrote in Japanese on each piece of tape before putting it on the lids of each container. Anzu hemmed at her in response. Sheepish at the unwarranted thoughts of jealousy when it came down to what Anzu was to her fiance, Rebecca let out a sigh.

"What is it?" The brunette looked over her shoulder at Rebecca as she began to put away the containers. Rebecca was uncomfortable, gripping hold of one of her arms with the other, shifting her weight every so often as Anzu gazed upon the shorter woman. Anzu made her fidget without meaning to, made the thoughts of Yugi preferring his friend's company over hers sometimes overwhelming, but most of all, Rebecca knew that Anzu didn't try to do any of those things. When she had come along, Anzu made sure that Yugi paid more attention to Rebecca, actively making sure she was busy whenever Rebecca mentioned she wanted to do something while she was in town. She was thoughtful that way and it made Rebecca grateful, but it also made it hard to actually know Anzu anymore than what she did. The American woman had chosen to not to get to know her boyfriend's best friend really, leaving Anzu's and her relationship tenuous at best.

"Thanks for being Yugi's friend. I know we aren't the best of friends but you've been there for him like you are now. I just...I want you to know that I'm not going to stop that when we get married. In fact, I was hoping you would be a bridesmaid. I know he's going to ask Jonouchi to be his best man, so maid of honor is going to Mai, but I want you to be there too." Gripping her left arm with her right, the American peered up at her fiance's best friend to see her reaction. Saying all these mushy things to the dancer was almost unbearable but it was something that Rebecca had on her mind for the last while, acknowledging to herself at least that Yugi wanted Anzu to be in the ceremony in some fashion, but he didn't know how to really tell Rebecca that.

It wasn't as if Rebecca hadn't picked up on his comments here and there when she was wedding planning, but it was hard for her to ask, when Anzu wasn't more than an acquaintance sometimes to her.

"I would love that." Anzu stared at her in wonder before smiling softly at her best friend's fiance. Yugi had mentioned once or twice that he wished she could be someone in his wedding to Rebecca Hawking, but he had felt it wasn't his right to ask her to do anything in it. Knowing Rebecca was actually asking her, the dancer could only feel elation and gratitude fill her. She knew it was a step forward in the awkwardness of their relation ship. Rebecca left it at that, choosing to go outside to the veranda where Sugeroku was sitting, playing chess with himself.

Anzu glanced at the two of them before going down the stairs. She put on her shoes, taking off the slippers Yugi had bought her back in high school for his house, and grabbed her purse. With one last glance up the stairs, Anzu opened the door and left, quiet as a mouse.

Without a word of good bye, she slipped out.

LLLL

"Ryou, don't worry. I'll be fine. I've made this trip how many times now?" Stepping into her kitchen to gather the hot cocoa she had made, Anzu adjusted her hold on her cell phone. Wearing a tank-top that fell down to her thighs and stretch capris, the brunette is almost ready to head for her bed at the bedroom near the stairwell.

"Four times a year." There is sigh heard from the phone as a very Welsh accented voice replies. Lightly closing her drawer as she retrieves a spoon to stir her mixture of hot milk and Swiss Miss, the dancer smirks at his reply. It was like this every time she went to London to do her auditions.

"Exactly. Kaiba pays for my seat each time. You know he will make sure that the plane is well-maintained." Ryou was always worried about her flying by herself, but for the past four years since she became an internationally known ballet artist, sponsored by Kaiba Corporated, he seemed to be more worried. It wasn't ever stated to Anzu whether or not Kaiba made sure all the planes were well-maintained before she boarded but she never had the stories of waiting for her flight to be fixed or having to switch planes due to mechanical failure.

"How is Yugi's grandfather doing?" Ryou decided to switch the conversation from her incoming travels. He was kept in the loop by Anzu more than anyone else, but even he had some niggling of an idea that Sugeroku was sicker than usual. Anzu's downtrodden sigh confirmed his thoughts.

"Not well, but he's been better for a month or so. It's alright for me to leave. Yugi said he would let me know if anything happens while I'm staying with you or when I'm in New York." Going up the stairs towards her bedroom with hot cocoa in one hand, phone in the other, the dancer stopped at the top of the stairs in thought. To admit that she wasn't scared of coming back to Japan after her auditions and finding Sugeroku's funeral being planned would be a lie. She felt inwardly terrible at leaving Yugi when his grandfather's health was up and down so often lately.

"Is there any thunderstorms on your lay-overs?" Ryou's voice, a constant entity of kindness, pulled her out of her thoughts. His worry was sweet, but Anzu could only smile at it. She was used to him worrying far more than he should, but to be fair to Ryou, Anzu really couldn't fault him. He had been suppressed by the Spirit of the Ring and hadn't dealt well with the aftermath. Ryou still walked around on eggshells, sometimes even with her when their mutual past was brought up.

"No. Let me check the weather if it's going to save you some gray hairs." Teasing, the dancer placed her drink down on the desk in her room before grabbing the remote and turning on her television. She went through the regular local channels quickly as Ryou expressed his displeasure at the remark about his hair.

"Not funny, Anzu." It was technically a sore spot for him. Color bled quickly away any time he had tried to dye it a different color, not that he had tried often. The platinum blonde color was something he had inherited from his mother and had shared with his sister, Amane. His father's darker-almost brown blonde had at times made it seem as if his father was the odd man out in the family.

"It was a litt-...Ryou, have you talked to Malik lately or Ishizu?" Anzu gasped when she crossed the international news channel, gaping at the sight in front of her. People were chanting and surging the ground news crews. The translation from English took the dancer a few moments. Her breath came short as thoughts of Malik and Ishizu Ishtar came unbidden. The last she knew of the Egyptian born siblings was that they had been in Cairo, visiting their kinsmen.

Thoughts of how dangerous Marik, Malik's alter ego, came to the forefront of her mind. He would thrive in the chaos and use it as an opportunity to destroy whatever control the young duelist had grown. It was not that she had fully forgiven Malik for his bout of mental illness in Battle City all those years ago, but she had chosen to get past the pain that had been inflicted upon her to help Malik get better after wards. He was one of Ryou's few friends that perhaps had a closer link to Ryou than even she did.

"Not since Malik went to New York a few months ago with Ishizu. They have an exhibit over at the Museum of History." Anzu tried to remember when the last time she had spoken to Ishizu, but she knew it had been more than a few months ago. Anzu made sure to keep in touch with Ishizu and Malik, to keep tabs on Malik's health as well as when Ishizu would come back to town and be able to visit Yugi.

"Turn on the world news. There's a riot happening." Her voice wavered, carrying her fearful thoughts of their mutual friends to Ryou. She could hear the soft gasp that her British comrade gave into the receiver as the echoing buzz of the television from his side of the line soon resembled the drone of the news about the riots.

"Anzu, I'll ring to be sure. You be safe on your journey here." With nothing in the way of a good bye, she was left standing there in awe of the television screen. The many figures that danced almost in the daylight, seeming to fight as a tide along the streets only caused her to fall down in wonder.

"Yeah, I'll try..." She spoke softly as she watched the reports differ between different reporters, all at different areas of the riots. A fleck of white hair came into view, white spiky blonde hair that was hard to see but was a flash in the browns and arid golds. Narrowing her blue eyes, Anzu watched in one of the clips that was being shown constantly as the blurred face of Bakura, Bakura with a scar down the right side of his face looked directly into the camera, but in the next second, it disappeared as if it had never been there.

'No way...He's gone. It's just a glitch on the screen, Anzu,' The dancer reasoned with herself, trying her best to ignore the niggling feeling that she was completely wrong and that the person she had seen, or thought she had seen was indeed the psychotic ancient spirit from six years ago, coming back to haunt her. It had to be a glitch.

LLLLL

In the midst of all the chaos that was around him, Bakura frowned to himself as none of the chaotic moving about actually seemed to effect him. People moved through him, unable to see the spirit. He was invisible and in a past life, he might have enjoyed that but now the simple idea of not being seen was annoying more so than anything. He had screamed at the two divers that had come across the sennen item that he was stuck in for hours. He sneered in annoyance and taunted them at first but with no actual response to his words, he found that he cared little for talking about them when they couldn't hear it.

At the moment, they were in an airport bar, somewhere in Heathrow International Airport and the two, Terra and her accomplice, the male that had picked his sennen ring out from the underwater cave, were talking, mostly about the ring. Bakura walked around the area, bored out of his mind by their conversation for every thief had the same kind of talk one day or another when talking about contraband.

"Glad we were able to sneak it past customs, Angel." Terra's voice was soft as she spoke and despite wandering away from the duo, Bakura found he could still hear them quite clearly, an advantage of his link with the ring. The man, Angel, laughed, clinking his glass against Terra's.

"Riots have them busy," were Angel's reply. The sound of glasses being settled down upon a wood table echoed in Bakura's ears. The Thief King glanced around to the comings and goings of the people around the walkways outside of the bar. His eyes stopped upon one figure who was heading out towards one of the exits. It was the girl- Mazaki- his mind supplied, coming out of the bathroom across the walkway.

"I know a few people over in London that could put out a few feelers for those who might get an interest in it." Bakura watched her head out towards the baggage claim. Something from the apathetic mess he had become ignited and all he knew was that he could not, definitely would not let him sold like some chattel without care. Anzu Mazaki was right there. Someone who knew of him at the least was right there!

"Meet up at the pub on Thursday?" His decision made, Bakura searched frantically to see if he was visible to anyone, praying to anyone that there was someone that would be able to sneak the ring from the pack that it was currently in. His brown eyes zeroed in on the only person who seemed to be staring straight back at him with confused blue eyes and cherry red cheeks. Without anyone else for a choice, Bakura decided that a five year old little girl would have to do.

"See you then." His chance came soon enough.

LLLL

Taking her shoes off with a huff, having traveled in them for almost twenty four hours across Asia and Europe to London, Anzu could only find herself in a downright grumpy mood. She had slept on the planes, waking up only when she landed, but had found with all the noise in the airport that she couldn't doze on her seven hour layover in Moscow, which was honestly quite a short layover according to Ryou when he picked her up in his car. To be fair though, it wasn't even the noise from Moscow that had gotten her into such a fit. Ryou closed the door behind her, taking off his own pair of boots.

"It's alright, Anzu. I'm sure it will be found soon." His soft voice did little to sooth her nerves as her fingers fumbled untying her sneaker strings. Grumbling, the brunette turned towards her friend with a sharp gaze.

"How could they have lost my luggage? This is the first time in four years!" Visibly upset, she finally kicked off her shoes, causing them to land on the shoe mat where Ryou's boots were placed gently next to. She stepped away from the front door to the cozy looking living area. Ryou's old couch looked as homely as it had the last time she stayed in his flat and a sense of relief filled Anzu at seeing that she did not see a flicker of Bakura as she had on the television. She knew that looking for Bakura wasn't going to bring him around.

"Anzu, they said they will send it as soon as it gets in." Following behind her with a cajoling smile, her friend placed his hand gently on her back to usher her past the entrance of the living to settle on the couch. The smell of violets and lavender surrounded her as soon as she sat down. The comforting softness relaxed her. Ryou was all soft curves and smooth edges, warm and sweet like hot chocolate on a cold night. He continued speaking in his mild-mannered tone in Japanese for her. When they talked, he knew she preferred it, especially in situations as stressful for her as this. "We can find something. I believe my father may have kept some of my mother's things."

"Thanks, Ryou. You're such a life saver." Slowly smiling, Anzu finally lets out a sigh, falling back into the cushions of the sofa. She closes her bright blue eyes, feeling the weight of the world rise off her shoulders. In the black that she feels herself falling into, she can hear Ryou stand up and head into the kitchen nearby.

"Don't think anything of it," is the last thing she hears before falling into slumber from exhaustion.

LLLL

When she wakes up, a few hours later, past lunch and a bit early for supper, Anzu can only breathe in the sweet smell of lavender and the mint that Ryou grows by the windowsill. It was raining earlier, but when she looks out the window, it is only slightly damp on the concrete in the garden. The clouds are still stormy looking, gray and ready to drop more of their rain down from above the shingled roofs and the other crowded buildings. Heavy knocking from the door knocker is the only thing to stop her from taking in more of the after storm's grace. Interrupted from her gazing, the brunette looks questionably for Ryou to find him trying to get out of his galoshes from the back door, to hurry to the front door to answer it.

"Coming!" The dancer waves him off, answering his front door for him. The sweater-vested heavy set man in front of her gives her a raised eyebrow. Glancing to the mirror above the jacket holders on the wall, Anzu blushes at her wild trusses. Sleeping on the couch has created a cowlick that half her hair seems content to go with.

"Luggage from Heathrow for a Ms. Mazaki?" Anzu smiles, nodding to him in confirmation. "Sign here." The man, Henry, according to his name tag, nearly shoves a small brown clipboard with a pen attached to it by some tape and twine to her. She gives him a look of askance at the pen, to which he gave the answer to. "People kept taking my pen by accident." With a chuckle, Anzu took a moment to glance down behind his knee on the steps to see her luggage looking like a gift sent from above. A wide smile dances upon her lips as she signs her name in Japanese, before remembering to scratch it out and write out her name in English for the man.

"Oh, thanks! Have a good night." Henry, taking his clipboard back with her signature on the piece of paper, nods, handing her the grip to her luggage. With the way he walks off and into the car on the road in front of the stoop, Anzu has no doubt that she won't be kept as anything else than another customer he has served in a long line of faces and names.

"Huh. This is heavier than I thought it was..." Waving goodbye, Anzu pulls her black baggage through the door, feeling as if it weighed more than when she had initially checked it in back in Narita Airport. Frowning, the brunette eyes her bag to see if there is any obvious reason why it should be heavier but from her inspection comes no answers.

"Anzu, did your bag come in?" Ryou calls out to her from the back door, having gotten one of his galoshes off during the entire quick exchange between her and Henry. Ryou watches her crouch down at the black bag.

"Yeah. I'll take it up to the room." She moves to stand up, taking a second glance to read her personal tag on the handle. With her confirmation that it is her bag, she grabs the handle and proceeds to go up the stairs. The thump of her suitcase hitting the next stair is the only sound between the two of them. Ryou takes his time to get off his other galosh.

"Dinner will be soon." He says it loudly enough for her while he heads into the kitchen, mostly to double check the casserole he has created and put in the over for the night's supper. Looking at the time, the silver-haired dungeon master could only sigh. He had wanted to spend some more time in his backyard garden before having to get his hands clean to cut and steam the specific vegetables that Anzu preferred.

"Enough time for a shower?" Putting her reacquired luggage into the guest bedroom, one that had all different colors of pale blue and white lace in it with its own attached bathroom, Anzu peeked her head over the railing to ask her dire question. Ryou leaned out of the kitchen, meeting her eyes with a soft smile.

"Yes. Cuppa?" His offer of tea wasn't anything to sniff at as Anzu felt a wide smile dance on her face. His Earl Grey tea made her Jasmine tea pale in comparison. While Anzu brought the Eastern style of tea to life amongst their friends, it could be said that only a true Brit could bring European styled tea to its maximum potential in taste.

"Any type will do." He laughs, knowing that Anzu has particulars when it comes to her tea, having shared tea with her for almost a decade, more so than any of their other friends had. He had introduced the British way of tea-making to her and she had brought him into a rarely seen part of her life when she started having him come over for studying during their last years of school together.

"Let the water run a few minutes before you get in." She waves at him dismissively. He knows she heard him which is good enough as he turns back to the dinner he is preparing. Once upstairs, away from Ryou and the smells of the kitchen, Anzu looks into the front of her backpack that she carried with her on her trip, to where she kept her pajamas and extra set of undergarments. Taking them out, she grabs a set of white fluffy towels from the linen closet in the bathroom, shutting the bathroom door behind her.

Sighing in happiness at the idea of not having to worry about her audition clothing and her dance shoes, the brunette gets to filling up the bath. The steam is more than enough to make her feel full and lazy like a cat getting the cream it deserves for all of its hard work. Undressing once the tub is full, Anzu takes her time getting in. When she finally is in the bath, she takes a breath and dunks herself to the bottom of the tub. At the bottom, she opens her eyes with a sense of serenity pouring into her. Whoever had the room before it became the guest room enjoyed the stars it seemed as there were glow in the dark stars all over the dark blue ceiling. The wallpaper, some blue and white striped thing, made it seem as if she were reaching for the sky of put upon constellations. The need to take a breath takes hold only a minute later and it is when she breaks the surface, when she peers towards the toilet, after having relaxed with the warm lull of the filled tub that she sees Bakura again since the airport. Her mouth opens to scream but she stops herself short before the air can escape to only snort. She would only worry Ryou and she knew that seeing the ancient spirit that had possessed him and abused him would only make all the progress he's had with his therapy go back for years.

He's only staring down at her with the a face that makes her feel as if he's as bewildered and alarmed as much as she is. After dealing with all of Yugi's duels throughout the many, extremely many tournaments, Anzu realizes she really doesn't have much to fear. Sure, the Bakura standing by the toilet not even five feet away could kill her but in her experience if he was going to, she wouldn't have seen him in the first place.

'Why is he here anyway?' Her mind questioned as it dawned on the dancer that the situation was only going to get more awkward if neither of them spoke. It wasn't often Anzu bathed with someone nearby, let alone someone in the same bathroom unless she was dancing in a show or at her practices for ballet. She couldn't even think of a time that the other occupant had been male either. So, in all, this was a first.

"Bakura, I'm not going crazy, am I?" So far, with all the other things her mind can come up with to say, confirming her sanity seemed a first priority. After so many years and dealing with strange events, the dancer had to have some basis for her reality, even if that meant talking to incorporeal spirits while bare in a tub full of soap and water. For a few more moments, Anzu thought he wouldn't answer. His posture was tense before he moved to settle on top of her towels on the toilet seat.

"Honestly, I don't think you ever were in danger of that." He stares at his hands, clasped between his legs, focusing on the callouses of his fingers. This was himself. He knew the scars and where he had received them from and yet it was very foreign for him, ever since he had reawakened. A rather un-ladylike snort is all he gets for a few more moments as she dunks her head under water before resting her arms on the edge of the tub and her head on the rim.

"That's good, I guess." Her voice carries little weight for him as he continues his fixation with his hands. Blue eyes watch him with every movement, unable to shake the feeling that this really isn't the Bakura she is used to have dealt with before. It's an unspoken word between them, a heavy weight in the air as she wants to ask but is afraid he'll retaliate as he sits there, thinking upon something she isn't sure she can grasp. Could Zorc be gone for good? Is Bakura really just the thief or is he still evil?

"How long has it been?" The gravel of his voice takes hold against her body, reminding her that not too long ago she had definitely had multiple dreams of the tomb robber robbing her innocence with his all too knowing smirk and marked features. His eyes had lifted from his hands to her eyes, taking in the darker hue of blue he had forgotten about in the darkness as color had been sapped from him for so long.

"Six years." He took a sharp inhale of breath. _Six years?!_ His mind raced. He was gone for that long? The emptiness in the darkness came back to him and he realized he had probably slept those years away in a comatose state of nothingness. He had had no basis for time. The isolation did little to help his mind from ruminating on the loss of his drive and ambition to actually do anything to try and find a way out of it.

"The Pharaoh?" The name still left a taste of bitterness in his mouth, but Bakura wasn't sure if it was from regret at not being able to kill the man himself, spirit and all, or if it was from his hatred for the man. It was a test for himself. Since Zorc had been destroyed, the anger and hatred he had held onto as a life line for so damn long since the destruction of Kul Elna had always been easily ignited by the very mention of the Pharaoh. Instead of feeling the need to destroy something out of anger and sadistic glee, Bakura felt nothing more than a pang of distant dislike as if the Pharaoh had been just part of his old life and not part of his reason to continue living for more than a millennium.

"Atem's been gone for most of them. He's gone." He snorted in annoyance at his feelings of general disinterest about Atem. It was that…..he no longer cared. Zorc had helped fuel his anger but now that he was gone and the Pharaoh was out of his reach forever, with everyone who had once been responsible for the destruction of his hometown as a child dead and long gone, he was at a loss. He figured Mazaki could continue prattling on about the man, but to him it would be nothing to give her an ear for. It was like talking about bad weather.

"Then why am I here?" He hadn't meant to speak those words aloud, instantly regretting that he had. He turned to see Anzu curled against the side of the tub, the water rippling as she swatted at his leg for him to move it, not actually touching him. He frowned before doing so. It would be too much trouble to attack her, even if he could, not sure of how the rules quite worked out in this arrangement. She grabbed her washcloth that had been under his leg.

"I don't know, but you're not going to possess Ryou." She dipped the cloth in the water, soaking it thoroughly before applying the soap he spied on the other side of the shower. Anzu figured she was likely crazy or dreaming in the bath, but she was not going to waste good hot bathwater on crazy. She shrugged at her newest reality. After everything in Domino had happened with Atem, she had grown emotionally, becoming more stable in her choices, choosing to follow-through her dancing, overcoming her shyness with her body eventually. Dancing and showering with a gaggle of girls after her practices had certainly helped. She just tried her best to not mind the fact that Bakura was most definitely male, with rugged good looks that Ryou could one day grow into, but unlikely wouldn't.

"No. I won't. Not now at least." Watching the woman in the tub start rubbing her arms with the soapy cloth, Bakura shook his head at the idea. Possessing Ryou again had poached his mind briefly, but like with the thoughts of the Pharaoh, the desire to even want to affect the world again, more than he was-by testing Mazaki's mental stability a little- seemed to be small at best. It was loathsome almost. He didn't want to be stuck in that weak body, one that would likely blow away at the most adverse winds. Ryou would be safe from him.

"What do you mean by that?" Asking Bakura to explain himself seemed to cause him to disappear without warning. Anzu stretched her hand out to where he had been, trying to figure out if he was ever really there in the first place. "Hey!"

"Anzu?" Her cry of surprise did not go unnoticed as Ryou came and knocked on the bathroom door. Blushing, Anzu ducked into the tub to hide her face. She didn't want him to know about Bakura, so she gave him a lie instead, feeling slightly terrible for doing so in the first place, as Ryou needed honesty around him more so than liars.

"Sorry, give me a few minutes! I fell asleep!"

LLLLL

The next time she sees him, he's sitting on the bed where she's supposed to sleep. His hands are brushing the quilt that Ryou's grandmother had made his mother. The light blue of the pattern sewn into the blanket contrasts with his darker tanned skin. She honestly doesn't know what to make of him being there. The questions still continue unhindered in her mind, but some she knows would be far too prying and others mostly obvious.

"I don't know why you can see me." His words answered one of the many silent questions she had for him. His eyes were soft hues of red, almost violet, reminding Anzu of the Monet paintings she had seen at her father's work when she was a child. His fingers seemed to be pulling at a wayward strand of threading from the quilt, twisting and turning it around one of his fingers as he spoke to her with his voice deep and gravelly as if he could be the warm hearthstones she had imagined sitting on as a child during Christmas.

"I'm going to take a wild guess and say that's not my bag." Bakura snorted in return at her words.

"No. It is." Anzu was rather relieved at that. She had her dancing shoes, both tap, ballet point, and heeled ballet shoes in there, most which cost Kaiba money that he hadn't wanted to really part with when it came down to sponsoring her trade. He often sent her memos about how often she had to buy point shoes. (Not her fault when she ended up constantly dancing in ballets where point shoes were required.)

"The sennen ring is in there, isn't it?" He nods to her question, looking pointedly towards the zippered pouch on the luggage. The brunette is not sure what to do with the piece of Egyptian mystic jewelry. She should probably call Ishizu and see what the museum collector would do with them. Instead of reaching for her cell phone, she opens the pouch where he was staring. She isn't surprised to find the sennen ring resting amongst her makeup bag, though she probably should be.

"Yes. I was able to call out to a child. I had her find your bag and put it in there." He answers another one of her questions without her actually asking. The dancer wonders if he can hear her but it seems unlikely. She slips the necklace out of the zippered pouch, putting it instead in the bottom of her travel bag, where Ryou would not find it so easily.

"How did it get lost then?" Her inquiry is met with silence. She looks up at Bakura after putting the golden necklace under her clothing in the luggage. He is looking away from her and she takes in his form with more leisure than she had in the bathroom. He is visible, but not solid, transparent enough that he colors the things he stands upon. She blinked with bewilderment. A tinge of pink was visible on his cheeks.

"..." Was he blushing? Could spirits even blush? With silence being the weighed upon enemy of their conversation, Bakura ducked his chin to his chest, pouting to himself. The idea of the Thief King spirit sulking was certainly silly, especially in the situation Anzu found herself in. "...I forgot which belt we took it off of."

"Oh..." What else could she say about that? She smirked though at the idea. Bakura had likely been more angry than anything that he couldn't remember where her belt was.

"What are you going to do, Bakura?" Anzu's voice brought him to the realization that he didn't have any other plan available. He didn't know what he wanted. The idea of the familiar is what had spurned him to get the sennen ring into the dancer's bag in the first place. He was in the familiar abode of Ryou, but getting back into the psyche of Ryou was the last thing he really wanted to do. There was nothing for him to do. He didn't even know why he was brought back now.

There was only silence as her answer. She finally looked up to see him stare at her, but he looked as if he was seeing past her. She wasn't there to him and for another moment, Anzu felt as if she was observing a star fall in the middle of a midnight sky, falling down fast and streaking the darkness with its brilliance for only a few moments before glittering out and becoming an empty space against the black pitch of night.

"I will stay with you."

LLL

"Your toes look horrible." Bakura's comment isn't snide, just matter-of-fact as Anzu is putting on the lotion she likes applying to her toes. He is staring with eyes so brown and red that she feels as if he is the sunset on dark soil. He burns the world with his stare, but he is burning with curiosity, unspoken questions as he isn't elaborating upon what he really wants to ask. It is trepidation at its finest moments. For some reason, Anzu just accepts that this is Bakura's way of asking.

"It's due to my shoes for ballet. I wear point shoes for certain ballets. Hard on the toes as you can see." She laughs, more out of amusement than shame about the way her toes look to him. He almost frowns but stops before he does. "Ballet wasn't during your time, but it focuses a lot upon precision and grace. Looking almost as if I am in flight on my toes while executing one or two pirouettes- twirls," She takes a moment to explain what is what for him, something Bakura quietly appreciates as ballet was not something he put a focus on when he was infested with Zorc, "is the best feeling in the world. Getting lost in an art is beautiful."

Bakura stares at her, watching her eyes glitter in awe of the dance she is describing to him. He is in two places at once. The face that looks at him with blue eyes is darker skinned, almost a black with cerulean blue dust around her eyes, drawing him in. He feels his once dead heart beat, a beat that it shouldn't be able to procure. He sees Egypt in the skies of her irises and is reminded that he had a life. He sees the mischief in Teanna, the concern, the lilted eyes of kindness that desired his company. The past is with him in a way that he cannot break from.

His fingers brush against her skin. The touch so light and fragile that the Anzu doesn't know what to make of it. She is caught in a memory to him. She is not there and there and he can't decide which is which at this moment. What breaks the spell is worst than being in the darkness. It isn't until the spell is broken with light olive skin replacing dark with charcoal-lined eyes and blue powder on the lids, that Bakura swallows thickly. He can feel guilt touch his toes as surely as Anzu can see him.

He only whispers, "Teanna," with such a hushed, harried, breathless way that it seems as if he is calling out a prayer to his gods. Anzu blinks and he has vanished. Left alone, the dancer gasps for breath as sorrow grabs hold of her and the only sense of why is a pair of amber eyes that have mysteriously disappeared again.

LLLL

He was in the audience of the vacant middle balcony where no one sat any longer as it was unsafe despite being the grandiose part of another time, seated without fuss as she went through the routine. The only other people in the theater were herself and the three people watching in the front row, judging with contemplative faces. No one seemed to take notice of him, except for her. She could feel his crimson brown eyes take in her form with a hunger she did not know of. It had only been a few days since he appeared in the bath and only yesterday when he confirmed he wouldn't be seen by Ryou. This morning with his whispered plea for whomever Teanna was, still played upon her mind. It was strange to see him so soon.

Ryou had wanted to come with her to the audition but she had begged him not to, not wanting him to accidentally see the spirit of the sennen ring that had haunted him for years. His progress of being out in public was going rather well and honestly, Anzu didn't want her dear friend to regress back to the mess he was after high school, being stuck at home working on campaigns for Monster World. (Which Kaiba had bought out a few months beforehand and had hired Ryou as a lead writer for them after hearing about some of the campaigns they had participated in during their vacations when not at duel tournaments or Otogi's arcade)

He had chosen to pick her up instead right after, taking it down to her nervousness about the audition, though it was with gentle chiding that he reminded her that she would have to get over her stage fright and that he would most definitely be at the first showing on opening night. She could only sigh at the grateful and betraying thought that she was glad Ryou hadn't fought her too much on coming with her to her try-out. If he had, she might have let slip the real reason why she hadn't wanted him to come, the one sitting on the supposedly vacant middle balcony amongst filigreed chairs and ornately carved armrests of an era long bygone.

She probably should mention to someone that she was seeing and talking with a specter of their shared past, but because of just who Bakura was and how he was acting now, she still chose to keep silent. Truthfully, it wasn't fair that it was Bakura who had found his way back into her life and not Atem. Though if Atem did come back, Anzu knew it wouldn't have been for her. He wasn't tied to her the way she had chosen to be to him. It was the way that it had always been.

She heaved a breath from her lungs, keeping herself back from the idea of Atem coming back. Despite the slippery slope that she was standing figuratively at the precipice of, in her own mind, Anzu did not feel the need to follow down the crevice to the unsteady depression that awaited her like she had when Atem had first been taken and the sennen items had fallen down into the earth, swallowed by the maw of broken crust.

Looking over at the spirit who had come back as she completed her audition with one last twirl on her feet, posing in the finishing set, Anzu came to a decision. Bakura was in the present and so would she be.

LLLL

It isn't until she's leaving England, two weeks after arriving, that Bakura seems more real to her. He is casting a shadow, a dark thing that hadn't appeared during any of their earlier conversations. When she notices, he's asking where she is going. He is standing against the dresser where the window is open, letting in the rare sunny day. The sun crosses his features to the floor and in the dust there is a shade of himself to her surprise.

"New York City. I will wait for a call from there, but the ballet companies are looking for new talents this spring." He nods, understanding that she means a different country, having had things sent from overseas before. Anzu watches him warily, uncertain if she should tell him that he seems more visible. There are tones in his hair and skin that is showing more and more.

He is copper and ruddy red with silver and pale blonde flitting this way and that in the sun in front of her. He is earth personified, dry and cracked with his scar breaking his face as if by lightning to rest beside the mountain of his lips. He wears a crown of metal fringes and soft ends.

She stares with wonder. He is the story told thousands of times to only be retold once more with a new light. To her, Bakura is no longer a former dimension of who he once was. He is becoming. He is shifting and creating and being more.

Trepidation warns Anzu.

"What are you staring at?" His words seem less like gravel in a drought of dried wasteland. It is a shifting erosion, a hiss of wind. The dancer can't help but swallow to herself and wonder if she should lie. She fidgets in her silence. Should she keep the news of his shadow to herself? Should she not speak of it at all? One look at those eyes he bores into her and Anzu knows what to do.

"Your shadow."

She drops the door and follows his bewildered visage to the imitation him on the ground to his side. He is born from the gallows with her words bringing him honesty instead of lies.

LLLL


	2. Hiraeth

In and Out of Focus

Part II: Hiraeth

LLLL

" _Oh, Shenandoah,_

 _I long to see you,_

 _away,_

 _you rolling river!_

 _Oh, Shenandoah!_

 _I long to see you,_

 _away,_

 _I'm bound away_

 _Across the Wide Missouri"_

 _-Oh, Shenandoah_

LLL

It is on the day that they are leaving for New York that Bakura appears to her in rumination. He is set in some far off place that Anzu Mazaki can't fathom, fading in and out of their strange existence. He sees the world in a different scale, one where eons have gone away in the blink of an eye and the erosion of time has left him raw. He is bruised from the passing of ages and it causes her grief in a way she is unable to fully handle at that particular moment. The clock on her phone is a pale reminder of the measurements that he has surely missed. She, however, is in a flurry of movements after her phone chimes in exuberance, vibrating on the night stand by the bed she has taken residence in during her stay, crying out Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. She is swirling with intent, need with each room she passes into, grabbing remnants of her stay. A sweater from the living room, her socks from the bathroom, and her shoes from the door. It seems she will never stop her hurry as she whizzes past a rather sleepy Ryou, sipping his tea with a tranquility that her busyness can't seem to gather.

Despite being able to look directly at Bakura, Ryou passes over the space he occupies with no alarm. The reasoning was something Bakura and Anzu had yet to figure out but were blessed by the knowledge when the first time Bakura had not known Ryou was entering their room. (He called it their room, though Bakura knew it had been Amane's and was now just a memory trapped in the flat that Ryou's father owned.) It had been an accidental learning, when one morning, the gentle Brit came with a cuppa to wake his dancer friend from her nap and the bane of his mental instabilities had stood at the bay window in surprise, having been caught while enjoying the sunlight that filtered through the eaves of the tree beside the house. Ryou had paused at the open doorway, staring at Bakura as if sensing him, but shook his head at the idea of Bakura being right there, placing the cup of tea on the night stand and leaving.

When Bakura had told Anzu, she had a guilt trip that could make a catholic nun green with envy. The accident had been a blessing in disguise as they had learned the important truth that Ryou couldn't see him. In fact, it seemed that the only person who could was Anzu, as they had tested it out on walks around the local dog park when Ryou wanted to walk Ramses.

"I'll go get the lorry started, Anzu. Traffic shouldn't be too bad this time of the morning." Ryou stands up, stretching his arms before ambling his way down the stairs to the kitchen. The plunk of his mug hitting the bottom of the sink is barely heard as Anzu double-checks the en suite bathroom for anything she might have left unpacked before moving to the stairs. The clawed footsteps following Ryou around the house is a given with Ryou departing the house. The front door shuts, breaking Bakura out of his reflection. The Thief King sighs at the form of Anzu at the top of the stairs with her purse clutched to her shoulder and ready to go.

"Looks like I'm all good, Bakura." It is an unspoken rule. With Ryou around, they didn't talk. The thought that Ryou could hear him was enough to send Anzu into another guilt trip about lying to one of her friends, even if her friend couldn't see his former nemesis. Bakura gives a noncommittal grunt, earning his stay within the conversation. It has been like this since he touched her on the cheek almost two weeks before, tense and even worse, uncertain about what is exactly proper. When she has tried to talk with Bakura, she has only received minimal grunts and occasional nods since. Bringing up Teanna is asking for silence from the specter that has taken residence within her life. Their talks had been mostly consisting on her comments, almost conversing with herself more than him, but she figures with everything that Bakura had stated the first few times they've talked that he is as unsteady as she with what their lives have now become.

Looking over her shoulder at the silver-haired man, the dancer takes him in. His shadow is on the wall behind him, taunting her with the unknown meaning of its appearance. It whispers possibilities she's unsure of thinking and even worse, it promises something she is sure she shouldn't think upon. The what-ifs and the maybes constantly run through her mind when she pretends she is asleep, the time when he talks to himself, pondering things that leaves her dry inside with her heart beating out of sync with the rest of her.

In mere seconds, Bakura can bring up the thought that everything has just shifted somehow. The world is two inches to the left for him, breaking and shaking his core as he watches Anzu turn to go down the stairs to the first floor and promptly slips. He sees her fall forward and his mind blanks. Time is relative. It goes and goes and the minutes bypass those who wait and for those who don't, for those who have always had the drive to run to their goals.

Falls like that have killed people. It is a good fifteen steps to the bottom landing, enough edges to harm herself upon and Bakura cannot think as he sees her slip. He has fallen enough times in the past that he knows how much the edges hurt. Something in him that he is unfamiliar with knows that he can't have it happen to Anzu with her long dancer legs, and strong form, passionate in her physical arts. He sees the broken girl on the platform, bruised and broken by the whips of the palace guards, legs askew and torn in half by feet so much stronger than her own had been. All he knows is that he cannot see passion like that cut short again.

He dissipates and reappears only a blink later, caught in a second that Anzu is unable to register as her hands reach out to the railing for a grip to catch herself upon. Her fingers fail to find purchase on the banister and she is left to fall, to tumble against the hard wooden edges of the stairs. She closes her eyes tightly, ready for the waves of pain to hit, grimacing in wait.

The scent of earth and sandalwood prevails over her senses, clouding her nostrils. Arms, toned with the weight of a life filled with climbing and running and hiding are holding her to a body that is warm to the touch, filled with a heart beat that shouldn't exist. It pulses beneath her as they roll and she lands with her ear pressed against it. It beats and beats and it shouldn't; she can't breath because something is wrong with this, but everything is so right. It is the heartbeat she heard earlier in the week. She opens her blue eyes and she sees scars marring a tanned chest, a canvas she has never truly seen with her own eyes before. The scars fascinate her, but the feel of the solid man underneath her causes her breath to catch.

He gives out a shaky exhale, looking down to the woman in his arms. Bakura mentally checks over her body and feels a stirring that he hasn't in a very, very long time. Anzu looks up at him and he is caught in the ocean that stares at him. He sees saffron and the smell of incense that he could only find being sold at market. She is dark-skinned with laughter and blue around her eyelids and he knows that he shouldn't see her here in England for she is three thousand years past.

Anzu blinks and he can see Mazaki. With guilt, or what he could conclude as guilt for mistaking her as someone else, Bakura helps her to stand, letting go of her as soon as they do as if scalded by the reminder that he is a relic in this age and she is in her prime. They should not even be friends, but Anzu is the only one here for him, the only one he has accepted for help and it is what it is.

The silence between them reigns. They stand at different sides of a war they did not know they were part of, divisible the thought of whether or not what had just happened was true. Neither know the consequences, nor of the reasons he is able to be here and none of the others are, why he is only visible to her and no one else.

Her hand reaches out to him and for a moment, it looks as if he will not be touched, as if her hand will go through him. Trepidation marks them both in their fear of the unknown.

She gasps, shocked when it does not pass through him. He is a mountain under the tip of her fingers, solid and heated with life that she has no idea he could exhibit. He is bold-ed colors, strong and seen to her eyes with flushed cheeks that brush the silver blonde to the side. His dark brown eyes are frightened, living some unknown horror she does not understand completely. They are both so new to this, the touching between them, the consequence of it and all she can understand is that he is there and she is alright with this revelation. He is no longer a phantom to be seen in the dark. He is real. He is being.

The door opens behind him. Time quickens, making up for the lost minute that it took for Bakura to grab her. He steps back from her hand as if burned. Everything happens too fast for Anzu to follow as she blinks in confusion with Bakura's disappearance to be replaced by the appearance of Ryou reaching for his sweater on the coat rack by the door, not noticing her outstretched hand at first.

"Ready?" Ryou smiles as he looks up from shaking his foot on the welcome mat of any mud. Anzu nods, unsteady on her feet from the revelation that she could touch Bakura and heard an organ that should be long dead throb under her ear. Ryou reaches out for the hand the brunette has outstretched. Without even thinking about it, Anzu brings her hand back towards her, clenching her hand into a fist by her own heart. The look Ryou gives her is questioning at the gesture, hurt as well underneath it. She knows he's blaming himself for all the times he's ever harmed her by accident through the dark being that had possessed him.

Anzu doesn't want to tell him the truth, that the tingle of warmth she had felt jump between her and Bakura was too much to share with anyone else, even more, too special in a way she doesn't want to acknowledge. Smiling sheepishly, Anzu gives him an excuse, hoping that he'll buy it as she walks past him to her shoes.

"Sorry, shocked myself a few moments ago. Didn't want to shock you too."

She is too ashamed to turn and see if he bought the lie.

LLL

She finds that her seat is comfortable on the plane but there is no one else around in first class with her when he appears again. Bakura is sitting calmly beside her, looking at her with eyes filled with inquiry. With no one else around and being on hour two of her seven and a half hour flight, she speaks quietly.

"Are you okay?" He blinks at her question, not expecting her concern due to their shared past together. The Thief King nods slowly, glancing around them to take in the first class compartment. The stewardess is making coffee to serve and is the only one privy to any thing in the general area. He eyes the dancer beside him with a severity that he once gave to treasures, trying to factor in their true value.

"I should be asking that of you, woman." He brings forth the reminder that not even five hours past did she nearly crack her head against a flight of hard-edged wooden stairs. The look she gives him is mirthful and he can't understand why. It is a mystery that is pulling at his senses, drawing him in with an idea of something more.

"Maybe, but I think this is worse for you than it is for me." Anzu clues him into what she wants to talk about. Bakura can only frown as this would technically be the second time they've talked about the sennen ring that he has helped bring to her. Bakura turns to look around at the rest of the first class cabin, seeing that over half the seats are empty and even then, most of them are nowhere near Anzu and him.

"You look crazy talking to no one." He murmurs halfheartedly to her, hoping that she will take the hint that he actually doesn't want to examine the rules. He's enjoying their strange symbiosis, the fact that he's still existing, not wanting to question a gift horse like this in the mouth until later, until the newness effectively leaves them both with weariness instead, with the desire to become unattached most prevalent.

"Then make it so I don't." His dark red-brown eyes turn to her from the rest of the cabin in a flash and he can't help but feel off-balance by her words. She holds her palm out for him. Her cheeky smile is enough to make Bakura forget himself and chuckle. She is brave to do so, to want his hand in hers, to even offer such a thing to him, either that or a great fool, but Bakura thinks to himself, perhaps he is the greater fool for even wanting what she is offering. The mystery still lingers. The whys and the hows about their arrangement is what he doesn't understand and has been trying to for the past while. It takes up his thoughts when he finds himself alone for right now, he can't seem to exist without Anzu there, a relationship that is symbiotic enough for them both as she finds someone to talk to and he has someone to listen.

"Don't worry. I don't bite, Bakura." The silver-haired man quirks a smirk at her, taking her hand and holding it on the armrest as he settles into the seat beside her. The invitation taken and he can't help himself at taking in all of her intricacies. Her fingers are only calloused along her middle fingers' upper knuckles, from holding her pen, he assumes. She's ambidextrous too, from the fact that she has matching ones on each hand. The rest of her long fingers and palm are soft, reminding him of one of the few pleasures he ever took on his previous life with the lining of his coat. He can tell that her fingers are strong, from her art he supposes more than anything else. Leaning towards Anzu, Bakura feels a playfulness rise up in him as he turns his lips towards her ear to whisper to her.

"I do." The immediate blush that rises on her pale cheeks is confirmation enough for him to realize that she may have stepped into a ring she was not prepared for. When he moves to settle against the back of the seat, he sees a stewardess approach the two of them with a cart. She looks at the both of them, puzzled before shaking her head slightly as if to tear herself away from whichever problem was causing her bewilderment. Bakura knew it likely had to do with his sudden appearance. How does one see a man that isn't there during boarding?

"Did you need a blanket, sir?" The woman speaks in English and his mind whirs constantly with the translations. He shakes his head at her inquiry, taking a moment to glance at Anzu who shakes her head as well. Before the stewardess could ask the next question, Bakura finds his voice, testing whether or not she could actually hear him as well. "Anything to drink?"

"Coffee. Black." The woman nods, looking over to the brunette beside him.

"And you, ma'am?"

"Coffee, one cream, two sugars please." She nods before heading towards the front of the plane, taking the cart with her as she does. The Thief King snorts, amused that the woman beside him is interested in coffee when she could sleep the entire trip, not having to deal with his selfishness at wanting to be alive, well, alive enough in their weird quandary.

"Coffee, Mazaki?" He teases her, more out of a need for himself to hide that he feels a very small amount of appreciation for her desire to stay awake and to do so with him. The brunette gives him a snort of derision.

"I want to enjoy the flight," She speaks it offhandedly, tilting her blushing cheeks away from his eyes to take in the view of darkness from the window. Bakura lets her be for a few moments before he finds the uncertain words departing from his mouth out loud.

"Are you sure?" The dancer returns her blue ocean eyes to his form, taking in his gaze as he tries to look as if he hadn't just said something so out of character for him. Raising an eyebrow, Anzu smiles softly.

"I have no doubt you like feeling like this." She gestures to his physical form, the hot flesh and pulsing blood he feels in him. The transition is strange enough and full of questions that he can't seem to find no matter how hard he thinks upon it. He looks to their clasp for answers, caught in thought.

"I do." The answer is frank, but he finds he hates prolonging words that should be said. For the first time in his life, he finds that he appreciates her. He sees himself as something that shouldn't be but she is offering him a chance at physicality, at being human enough, he would not stay a phantom, unable to really affect the world around him. Their coffees come, mixed already for Anzu, and as Bakura takes his first taste of the hot beverage, he is overwhelmed by the taste.

It is taking a new breath in an old world, feeling everything tilt just the right amount to steady oneself.

It reminds him of the times he's wandered the Sahara to the Upper Kingdom from the Lower where the Persians brought the drink along the trade routes on their way from Ethiopia. It was given at night to enjoy the stars, to praise the gods, and for concentration, when tasks needed the extra focus, but he had only used it for one of those things any time had taken it. He had enjoyed the bitterness when he was alive back then, knowing nothing could be sweet in life when he had already felt that he should be dead, looking up at the sky with anger, praying to no god because they had never appeared to help him before. He had cherished the properties of the drink as a method, but it was also one of the few pieces of happiness he had ever allowed himself on his tale of revenge.

He breaths in the aroma deeply, transfixed on the memories he is lost in. It brings him to a place that heralds laughter and men enjoying themselves on a sunny afternoon that is headed late in the evening with incense burning in the sconces and papyrus spread out on tables with laughter conjoined with the murmurs of men.

Anzu watches him out of the side of her eye before following through on drinking her own coffee. The heated beverage warms her up just enough from the slight cold air in the cabin that Bakura's skin under her own seems to do the rest. After putting her cup into the holder, she raises her finger to press the light above them to off. Anzu leans her chair back and looks up to the darkened ceiling.

Without meaning to, Anzu's thumb circles the back of Bakura's hand, taking in the sandpaper feel of his darkened skin. She is shaping him and she has no idea how or why. He looks at her and is taken in by what he sees in the dark unlit cabin. Unlike the rest of the dark world around them, she is highlighted by the shadows. He can see her nose and her lips and those blue eyes that are oceans and he finds that he wants to see more.

He gulps and finds that he can't really breath at that thought, the wanton wish to view her even more. Everything is overwhelming and makes him want to let go of her hand immediately, but she is also his anchor in the sea of their strange life together and he really doesn't want to let go. He misses the breathing, the feel of his heart as it is beating and the pulse of his blood in his body, things he had given up thousands of years before. He almost feels shame in holding onto her hand.

Anzu moves so she is on her side, facing him and begins to talk idly. It's nothing that requires him to actually care about, but her voice is soothing and he finds that he picks up clues about her life that not even Ryou knew about. He finds out that she loves watching terrible B-movies, the kind with such a low budget that it isn't even made correctly or, as she says you can even see the microphones and the acting is atrocious. She likes the parks, but just prefers walking around and enjoying the local places at any destination she goes. Anzu goes on and on about wanting to eventually make it to Washington DC during the Cherry Blossom Festival there, having gone to the one in Japan a few years before with her mom.

She speaks of philosophy and misogyny infuriating her and he can't help but listen to each word, speaking and questioning in return about the things he finds so different from his past and from his time in Ryou's body. They have a flight long conversation that fills him in a way he hasn't had in a millennium. She brings up Voltaire, Descartes, and Machiavelli, mentioning their words and he finds that shadow games seem such a minor thing when it comes to questions about the human condition and the thoughts of humanitarian theory.

Anzu quotes the Book of War, a book he thinks she would have never once read, except for her mentioning that she took a lot of philosophy classes for her humanities credits (He has yet to ask what a humanities credit is.) and that when she had been depressed, right after the sennen items had fallen in the earth, she fell back on the phrase, " _If the mind is willing, the flesh could go on and on without many things,"._

Bakura can't help but swallow a heavy rock down his throat as the words hit home. Just maybe, he is alive, because he finds the will to be and that frightens him more than anything because it speaks of something he has never thought of while he was wrapped in Zorc's essence. With Anzu he finds something he doesn't want to yet give thought to.

He wants to live.

LLL

It is the day after they have settled into New York and the jet lag has caught up with Anzu. She is laying on her side, awake in the middle of the night as London is already mid-morning. She has already stretched, practicing against the wall in the cramped apartment of her friend's, a woman named Eva who is out of the city for a few weeks on a tour with a dance company according to Anzu. Bakura watches her as her restlessness takes over and the dancer begins to make breakfast.

When she makes a second stack of pancakes and puts another plate and glass on the small two-seated table set against the wall in the kitchen, the thief is more than surprised. His surprise melts into hesitating elation when she finishes setting the table and holds out her hand without question for him to take.

He takes it and the transition between phantom and human takes hold. He is breathing and feeling and touching and his nose smells just how wonderful the pancakes smell. Anzu lets him enjoy the sensation before she uses her left hand to raise her tea to her lips and take a sip. Her blue eyes are sharp and determined when the cup leaves her hand, resting on the table between them.

"Was I anyone in the past?" It is a loaded question. Bakura can only contemplate on her question for a few minutes before he knows the silence will annoy her. Her face will become sullen and her lips will pout at the injustice of silence. The thief king knows he can't get out of answering, as he would normally try, because something about the line of clenched jaw, and her over-bearing gaze tells him that she won't quit until she knows.

What he wants to say is a lie. He wants to tell her that he and Atem, the pharaoh, had never known her, that she wasn't in their lives one bit. He wants to tell such a bald-faced lie so she won't know what happened to her was his fault. Ryou has asked the same when Bakura, the once great thief king of the sand kingdom, had been in his body. Bakura didn't answer then, didn't feel the need to. Ryou didn't need to know really and Bakura didn't speak directly enough to Anzu to be asked before by her.

He sees Teanna in her and the want to lie dies from the moment he opens his mouth. He has never told anyone about the woman who bewitched a marketplace with her smile and moves. Talking of Teanna is an itch, a regret coming into the light from the shadows of three thousand years. His lips are cracked open, a cask of water to quench her curiosity. He is kept to the reminder that bringing Teanna to conversation is bringing the only regret he had in his quest of power.

He finds that he cannot lie to Anzu and thus, he starts slow, dark earth being turned with a spade of disuse with his voice. Anzu Mazaki leans in close, close enough that he wants to move away, but he doesn't. He supposes this is part of his new life. She will always be too close at times and frankly, he knows in some small way, he wants that but the reason why alludes him. Her fingers stroke the back of his hand, soothing him before he even lets out his first sentence.

"You were a dancer back then." He feels the heat of the desert crowd him, the beats of a far off drum as children ran around excited at the girl in the plaza, who was blessed by the nimble feet of the gods. "You danced in the middle of the marketplace, around the slave platform on the afternoons when they weren't selling the slaves." Anzu and Teanna merge and he is dropped into the past. Teanna dances out of his lips and her story is told to Anzu. "I don't really know where you were from but I could guess. You were likely an orphan from the war during the previous pharaoh's reign. You took care of those who lost their families to famine, war, poverty, and their own debts. The thieves tended to leave you alone because of this. Some of those kids were theirs after all." He licks his lips, letting the food in front of him cool. "You had Jono help you. Jounouchi." He could close his eyes and remember the flutes and drums the kids played for the dark haired woman with the sapphire robes, the one with the easy smile who took care of anyone she met, as far as the rumors said.

She was poise and grace and Bakura had been fascinated on the afternoons when he'd watch her, mostly during lulls of his night time activity. Her hair was short and kept his eyes on her shoulders to see the strands brush against her tanned skin. By the gods, she would smile and he knew back then as he did now that it was the smile of someone who was passionate and loving despite the cruel world they had lived in. Bakura could feel his lips curve into an unconventional smile at the memory. It was one of the purest memories he had that hadn't been tainted in darkness, just contemplation of form and an aesthetic eye.

"I think you helped him a time ago before I met you. During one of the drier seasons, when there wasn't enough to go around, we ended up under the same awning, trying to hide from the heat with no food between the two of us. We talked of meaningless, stupid things." He can feel his heart ache with the image of the girl who sat with him under that white awning, smiling and laughing at some of the worst things Bakura could think she would laugh at. "She…." He pauses as he thinks upon what they were. Malik and he had been comrades after the same mission, but she was outside enemy and ally. She wasn't someone he used for more than interesting conversation when he couldn't get it elsewhere. Thinking back on it now, three thousand years later, Bakura had to frown as Teanna was quite possibly the only real thing he had to a friend at the time. "She became a...friend. One of the few I could ever say I had in my first life."

Teanna didn't ask anything of him besides sharing the awning that one day. She let him be when she saw him in the crowd, not calling out for him other than with a passing smile or wave in his direction. She hadn't been stupid though. She had known all along who he was.

"After that, we met often after the performances. She would sometimes even give me water." He let out a harsh laugh, self-deprecating at her bleeding heart for a man who was on the road to revenge. "It was…." He finds retrospection is a thing he doesn't really want to find himself looking at but he is forced to tell himself the truth. Teanna had spent her time with a man wanting to die for his cause, a man wanting to throw himself to destruction, not to save him from it, but to comfort him during it, to offer her friendship even if he died on his mission. In each scenario, she was only left with him leaving in some fashion. "It was foolish of her." He doesn't know why he finds each word so hard to speak about, because during this entire one-sided conversation, Teanna has come out in spurts of calmness and like a river, rocky and sputtering at times.

" The guards saw us sometimes and I didn't…." Bakura can't help but stare at Teanna incarnate. She is Anzu and he sees the past being repeated in front of him. He sees the looks from the palace guards as Atem passes by with his retinue to the temple. His arrogance fails both Teanna and himself as he thinks she is below their notice. In his dark heart, he didn't even think to tell her to hide when they passed by. "I didn't think they saw her. They…." He is taken back, by all of it, but he can't stop. Teanna wants to be explained. Anzu is on the edge of her chair, leaning forward over her breakfast, mouth partially open, blue eyes wide in earnest amazement. He sees Teanna there in her. The bright blue eyes wide but focused on him, mouth open and waiting for his replies, body leaning forward in her eagerness. He sees the minute they grabbed her from the platform in the middle of one of her dances. He can hear the whip being pulled from the hardened leather belts the guards wore. Their voices calling out, angry and demanding where he was, demanding an answer from her that she never had in the first place. She didn't know who he was more than what they call him. She knew of his title, knew of his deeds, but had no active part in his dealings. She was unfortunate. She was innocent. She was someone that had barely been connected to him for more than a few months. He made her a target. "After my break in and killing of Mahad, their magician and the original owner of the sennen ring, I came to tell you that you would not see me for much longer, but they…."

He looks at Anzu and the tears are starting to form in her eyes. He wants to tell her not to pity him but he doesn't. He wants to say he's sorry that she was caught and put through so much simply because he had found her a captivating jewel in the desert sands. He had wanted her but he knew back then, or at least, he thought he knew that he hadn't loved her. He continues on speaking, voice stolen of all its depth, hollow and echoing, speaking of his part. If she hadn't ever met him under that awning, if she had never laughed at his grumpiness, if she had never caused him to look at her once, she might have lived a life so different. Teanna could have been a wife to a good man, even had happiness and a home that was so much better than he could have ever offered her.

"They grabbed you and whipped you forty lashes on the place you performed on. They wanted my whereabouts. Those men of Atem's didn't rape you. They broke you in front of the market. They broke your legs and shattered your feet and I couldn't do anything to help you." His confession lays between them. He had plans. He couldn't be caught, wouldn't let himself be caught. Teanna paid for it. Her blue eyes had found his under their awning as each bite of the whip flayed her legs apart. They had caught his own and kept him watching, kept him from leaving but Teanna kept quiet. "I watched them. You were the best dancer in Egypt and they stole your life from you. The Pharaoh was told you were sold off to slavery, but no slave master would take you afterward when you tried to sell yourself off for the orphans to have some food." He sighed, intently trying to ignore the pangs of sorrow that surged in him from the memory of what he had witnessed and been too much of a coward to come forward to tell them otherwise. His mission though had taken precedence. "The gold I stole from the pharaoh though, I used it to set you up with gold and a home. Jono…..Jono took care of you and Malik, the man he was back then, made sure the children you fostered were fed."

It had been his chosen act of reparations before he went into the tombs for the last time, to want to face the pharaoh, to kill the king of their land in his tale of revenge.

Bakura jumps at the warmth surrounding him. He is no longer watching Teanna's form broken and bleeding on the platform she had once danced upon with mirth. He blinks back the strange feelings as he finally returns from his memory of the dancer and feels Anzu around him. He smells her and is brought to gardens of jasmine and honeysuckles. She is a balm on an old wound. "I know she forgave you. I know she forgave you a long time ago."

Teanna speaks to him, not Anzu, of the feverish words. Bakura says nothing in return. He just sits there, limp in her arms. The food on the table, cold and forgotten as his heart beats loudly and quickly between them.

This is the first time he knows forgiveness.

LLL

Their conversations at times are practically dumb. This is something he decides after they are holding hands throughout the supermarket, bickering about what they should cook. Anzu wants another night of fish and as much as Bakura is fine with fish, he finds that too much is too much. They have had fish for the last four nights in different variations. His choice of beef, a rarity from his time in the past, with a spicy curry sauce and plated with rice and scallions was enough to make Anzu frown, annoyed. She stated that she would likely fall asleep from such a heavy meal and she needed to practice before they went to bed. He decides this is all stupid to argue about because he sees her trying to make him understand customs and traditions he has seen her do, little rituals that govern her life but he is stuck in the in between and feels frustrated about his status there. She wants to integrate him and that rankles as to what would he find himself integrated into. It hisses and causes him to grit his teeth for he longs for sunny days and sand in a way that he hasn't done in a very long while. He is removed for so long from his native land that it seems strange to dwell upon missing it so fiercely.

He is homesick and the idea makes him want to fall out in laughter till he feels tears prick at the edge of his eyes out of desperation and want. 3000 years and all he wants is to lay in the sand and feel the coarseness of the desert drown him in its very essence. When he glances over at her putout face, upset that she had lost at their game of rock paper scissors about dinner, Bakura sees it in her too. She looks longingly at the aisle of international food that is set aside in the big supermarket her friend has recommended that has more international foods than others in the area. Her friend just assumes he's a fellow dancer when she Skype Anzu a few days after they're in New York City to make sure she's alright and has had no issues while staying at her empty apartment, and it makes him wonder just how much he is being seen and how far he is from being human.

Anzu looks at the packets of pre-seasoned dishes and frowns while he notes there is nothing of his homeland in this aisle. There is the Indian spices and Thai bowls, Japanese and Korean ramen and noodles set aside, but nothing of which he even considers secondary to his taste buds. Anzu instead heads to the meat to pick up slabs of beef for dinner that night. As she's inspecting the packaging, she murmurs to him in Japanese, so that others around them don't understand what they say, so that even in public with him appearing in the flesh, fingers tingling as they hold onto her from her touch, hot and flaming just from holding her hand, they are still closed off from the rest of the world.

"I miss my home when I'm away." She has replaced the package with another as she leans over, taking her time to read the weight and cost of the red meat in her hand. Bakura watches her avidly, hoping that she will pick the best piece for him as she peruses the beef section. It takes a few minutes before her fingers pick up two round tip steaks and puts it in their cart.

"I wouldn't know about that." Bakura's reply leaves Anzu in silence long enough that they finish their shopping, walk to the apartment, start making dinner and watching television. It is when she sets their dinner plates down on the small table, holding her hand out for him to take so he can enjoy the taste of steak in his mouth, that she even breaks the quiet between them.

"Do you miss your home?" He takes her hand, appreciating the fact that she took her time to cut their steaks so he wouldn't have to let go at all for her to do so. Taking a bite, Bakura is not sure how to answer. He thinks on it and comes up with the only answer he can give.

"My home is buried in the sands." He resumes eating, stating the fact for what it is. Kul Ena doesn't exist anymore, hadn't existed since he was seven years old, too young to stop it from dying in a blaze of war and chaos. He can't go back to it and he can't find it because the remains have likely eroded into nothing by now, swallowed up by the cruel world they lived in.

"I didn't ask where it was." Anzu's tone is a sword, as her fingers rub the back of his hand, something he finds more soothing than it really should be. Her face is scrunched up and he finds it is more adorable when she's like this, frustrated at his response and annoyed with his glib truth. The thought strikes him as more than strange, but he lets that go to the side. Her words cause his heart to ache with the destitution again, lunacy of desperation crying out the edges of his sanity from the desire to even go back to Egypt. For a long time, he stays quiet, choosing to eat the hot steak that she had made for him, not knowing that beef is a meal he had once in his life before Ryou due to how much one had to pay for it. She sits there in front of him, taking in his silence, eating with him to not let her food go to waste.

"It's buried in the sands." As they both finish dinner, Bakura stares at her. There is sauce at the corner of her mouth, slowly dripping down to her chin. As he speaks, he reaches out to wipe the sauce from her lips, bringing it to his mouth and sucking on it. The intake of breath is all he gets as he chooses at that moment to let go of her hand and disappear, leaving her with frustration at him and their discussion.

The next morning, she surprises him after her morning routine of stretching and making breakfast for the both of them.

"We're going somewhere. It's a surprise." She holds out her hand and he takes it without question. It is second nature for him to do so by now. As soon as they are out of the door, she takes him onto a bus at the bus station where the noise is too much for him to handle from the loudspeakers and every other word he has said in response to a question asked has been to repeat the previous phrase said. People on the bus make room for him and for the entire ride, she holds his hand, thumb running in circles on the back of his palm, so that no one will sit on him unexpectedly. The motion sickness rocks him and the English words and Spanish ones above them on the ceiling do little to help calm the roiling sea in the pit of his stomach. Translating in his head of what he is reading just causes it to get worse. He can't tell if this is punishment for his refusal to answer her question from the previous night or not.

It isn't until she tugs his hand to guide him off the bus after an hour or two, having not said anything more to him, that he feels Anzu's kindness is immediately too much for him to handle. She is basked in the sun, though it isn't as warm as the summers from his youth, and smiling shyly to him, shadows playing upon her face. She is hopeful of her intentions getting through to him though she has yet to say a word. His breath is caught in his throat and as he looks at Mazaki, Bakura can't help but think she is one of the most beautiful things in the world that he covets because of her kindness, even for a man like him.

Anzu has brought him to the sand and the sun, to bask in its heat. For a fleeting moment, Bakura feels so grateful he could hug her like regular people do. Instead, he brings his forehead to rest against hers, flushed with the thought that she went out of her way for him like this when he was really being more than petulant about missing his home. They don't speak and the quiet doesn't bother him nor her. It is the river of conversation between them as his eyes are wide and open for her to look into. They are moments in an hourglass that pass. When he steps away, hand clenching onto hers tightly, he looks to the beach and sees his home in a manner that had escaped him before. He takes in a huge breath and lets out the most heartfelt laugh for the first time in centuries.

The brunette with him can't help but find it captivating and is in reverence for the way his laughter lights his eyes and strikes his cheeks with a match. He is burning with life and echoing its favor from his mouth. As he reaches down to the sand, picking some up into a fist, letting it fall out of the bottom. Anzu knows she did the right thing.

He is lost to Egypt, but Egypt is not completely lost from him.

LLLL


	3. Sehnsucht

In and Out of Focus

Part III: Sehnsucht

LLLL

AN: Thank you all so much for the reviews! I hope you all continue to enjoy the journey! Please read and review! I have also noticed I screwed up with the names. Pharaoh Atemkahanet is Atem's father. Pharaoh Tutenkatem is Atem's full royal name. I noticed there was a lot of similarities between Pharaoh Tut's life, being erased from history via the Wall of Kings by Pharaoh Set I and Set II, while his advisor Sye ended up becoming Pharaoh, and was also erased by from history by the Wall of Kings, after him until Horebi (not sure if I spelled that correctly) succeeded him, into which he is stated as the next Pharaoh after Pharaoh Tut's father and sort of Atem's 'life', with him being a boy king as well. Most of the inspiration from this is from a few recent documentaries I watched. (Secrets of the Dead in case you were wondering.)

LLL

He hears music that he learned the sound of as a child and finds that he is wrapped in the dust of ages. Bakura can't focus on the present when he sees tablets in hieroglyphs in front of him. The images are eroded, taken by the sun and sky but he knows the coloring of the stone from the times he walked past some of these salvaged walls long before he was ever in the modern world.

The earth strikes him as a strange thing to contemplate, that time is a measure and he has found himself to be a whirlwind of different eons packed in one. His breath catches and he teeters. His proverbial past is put on a wall with depictions of what people think it is saying, but instead of theory and historical guesses, Bakura knows. He knows what the words mean. It is his wanted poster in front of him, along with the names of known associates and at the bottom of the list, he finds Teanna's name barely there, but there all the same.

He finds that the urge to break the glass holding the tablet surges like fire in a dry forest. Bakura wants to grab the stone and break it into thousands of pieces. He knows the price of his head, knows the price that he paid a thousand times over, and he even knows that Teanna does not deserve to be on that slab with him. It is the first time since he has woken from his strange slumber that Bakura feels the rumbling of rage within him. The old part of himself wants to grasp onto the familiar emotion, but he knows better. His enemies are long gone and Teanna is nothing but a whispered name he echoes at night to no one.

"...I didn't think Ishizu was here, curating still..." The soothing lilt of Anzu's voice stops Bakura's thoughts from going down the emotional hold he had felt for so long before all of this had happened. He is at once relieved at the feel of Anzu's soft fingers wrapped in his, massaging his knuckles with her thumb while she speaks. She has brought him back to standing in the present where the list of names mean nothing really to no one alive other than some part of a previous time.

"Well...It is what it is." His heart aches, dust flowing with each pulse, eroding to a dullness that beats just barely. Anzu gives him a worried glance, taking him in as if he were to shatter at any moment but they both are clever enough to know he won't that easily. Ishizu is here, likely with Malik behind her. The children of tomb guardians playing at being keepers of knowledge. Bakura can only breath a sigh of annoyance as he looks at the description on the wall of the tablet. He points to it for Anzu, to bring her eyes to the tablet as he reads off the description for her.

"This is a bulletin from the era of Pharaoh Tutenkatem the boy king. This reads a list of names and their offenses along with the reward for their capture." He gives her a dark chortle. His eyes tracing the hieroglyphs, reading and memorizing the forgotten words and phrases into his mind to be kept as a reminder that he is of this age stuck behind glass. "This is the stone they put up in the market lane entrance. The name at the top is mine. It is for information about me. Ishizu and her group of archaeologists are keeping the words hidden enough."

He points to the small paragraph that is beside the tablet. "A notice about a Tomb Robber that was highly prevalent during Pharaoh Tutenkatem's short reign." Bakura laughs, almost brokenly as Anzu watches him with careful eyes. "My life is put to one sentence in time." His finger drags downwards to one of the last few hieroglyphs on the tablet. "Teanna is there. She is nothing more than sand now." The Thief King finally takes his eyes off the stone in front of them, glancing over at Anzu.

Anzu cannot breathe for there is such heartache in his face that she is sure he is tearing apart in front of her, but she knows better. Bakura is the fall of the sun behind the distant day, becoming enveloped in the night by a new moon. He is held within her sights with a rueful smile on his lips. For the first time since Anzu has seen him talk of Teanna, she can tell he regrets his part completely. He regrets that time has forgotten someone he knew so innocently, but remembered him instead.

She swallows the hard knot that has developed in her throat, trying to keep the pretense of calm along her heart, but Bakura ravages her sense of calmness with his being.

"Sorry. Do you still want to walk around?" Her smile is slow to her lips as the feeling of discomfort fills the silence between them. Bakura's fingers tighten around her own as he thinks of how history can forget the innocent, much like they forgot Kul Elna. When he looks over at Anzu, watching the gentle smile on her lips, Bakura hopes to himself that time doesn't forget Anzu, that she will be brilliant on the stage she has chosen, even more than Teanna was in her days. Her thumb soothes him while she waits for an answer.

"It's been interesting so far." He murmurs between them, not wanting Anzu to let go of his hand. The strange feeling of her comforting warmth is something that Bakura finds himself desiring during the night while she slumbers across the room from him. During the day, she gives it without thought and he takes without consequence but he knows one day, sooner or later, Anzu may forget that he needs her hand to keep him anchored to this side, to their strange reality where they are both real.

"I'm glad." When she speaks this, Bakura feels heat creep up along his neck with his blood pounding in his veins if only for a moment because Anzu means it, every word. He has yet to find a person as genuine for him as she is, to be truthful, he has yet to look for any other. He is certain that if anyone else spoke that way to him, he would be skeptical of it, but he knows that Anzu's words mean something and even more, she means something.

"You make it sound like you live for entertaining me." He hides behind sarcasm, trying to keep her from noticing the heavy sway her words have for him. Glancing down towards Anzu, he sees that her hesitant smile is now growing.

"Oh, you should know better than to think that." She laughs and it is the laughter that makes Bakura feel light on his feet. He is wrapped in her sunlight with the day burning bright in the building inside. He doesn't want this to end at all, enjoying every moment he spends with her, even the most ridiculous times when they are arguing over Jeopardy or perhaps debating on dinner.

"You have been very accommodating since this started." He is in wonder, watching Anzu for any sense of betrayal as he openly talks of their situation, the unique sense of belonging she has with him. Their quandary is full of tangles and possibilities that neither of them have chosen to explore to its end, too precarious to do so. Anzu is accepting of him, in a way that Bakura is learning to accept himself, while both are so very cautious of each other, careful of their symbiotic halves.

"I can't really do anything about it." Anzu doesn't hesitate, looking forward at the tablet with her previous incarnation's name on it, barely legible even to her eyes. In the moment that she speaks, Teanna stands there under the awning, sharing a cup of water saying the same thing to him, eyes forward staring into the crowd on a day of celebration. Bakura is caught between the two lives, noting how similar they both are and yet how different, before Anzu's blue eyes drift to him, driving forth that she is the here and now.

"Do you want to?" Bakura wants to curse his tongue for the questions slipping out of his mouth, seeping through the dam of his will, unable to fully stop himself. He swallows on the spot, unsure of her answer. His heart beats and beats, caught in a rhythm that should not be while the world balances, moving to and fro on a pendulum based on her opinion. He doesn't know why he feels as if he is about to drop into the unknown, as if something is to change for them as she holds his hand, breathes him in, and keeps him at her side. He is sure she dislikes him being attached as she isn't as free as she once could be without him.

He doesn't know what he would do honestly if Anzu decided that she wanted to do something about their connection, to change it so it never existed, as if he never existed.

"No, I don't." Her declaration is spoken, a balm on his insecurity as her other hand comes to rest on his arm, trailing lightly on his darker skin without thought. The relief that floods him is questionable. He doesn't want to understand why. Being without had always somehow suited him, but it made him greedy and selfish in his past life for more, for something of value, while now he finds as he is lost that Anzu Mazaki is more than enough for him.

"Neither do I." It is a whisper spoken intimately just for her. Bakura gives a small smile, cheeks burning at the truth he has told her willingly. The woman next to him glows with affection at his confession that he doesn't want to give this up, not now at the moment. She is rose red and ocean blue swirling in edges of brown, unable to answer, unable to respond to such a personal disclosure. In lieu of a spoken reply, Anzu gives him a tug, pulling him from his past on the wall, heading deeper into the Brooklyn Museum's Egyptian exhibit.

Bakura digs deep to try to discover any sort of refusal but at one glance of Anzu's bright face in front of him, and he follows without question.

LLLL

When they are at the bust of Nefertiti, Anzu excuses herself to head to the bathroom. Left alone, Bakura is unnoticed, once again part of nothing but shadows and dusk against the backdrop of historical importance on the walls. People pass him with no glances or exclamations at the strange dark boy's bright white hair or his scar that he doesn't hide. He dislikes the moments he is a phantom being, the spectre that he truly should be, as he is to the history of Egypt.

"Bakura." The sound of a hollow coffin meets his ears. It is the emptiness that calls to him, making his stomach drop into a pit of nothing. It taps out his name with a deep groan of sand and dust, heaving from its empty chest, crooning to his soul with each syllable of his name. Cold seizes the tips of his body.

"Mazaki?" His voice wavers and Bakura damns himself for the feeling of fear that drips down his spine. He has cheated Anubis and Osiris for so long that he is sure they have come to make him pay his debt by now. Ironically enough, it would have to be in front of the very history he has outlived, wouldn't it? There is no answer from Anzu as restlessness pervades his body.

His eyes dart towards the small hallway she wandered into. People are going about their business, no sign of the woman he has followed. He knows that Anzu may enjoy the occaisional mischief but he has yet to hear her try anything like this to him. The unknown frightens him more than anything and the fear is deep rooted. He grimaces as a piercing thump resounds in his chest, painfully, rubbing it slowly with his hand. The thump feels it will jump out of his chest, drawing short ragged gasps from Bakura, stranded as he is.

"Bakura." It calls his name again. The grinding halt of old earth upon the heavy slabs of stone remind him of the empty temples at night back in ancient Egypt where he would wander in as a child to hide from the elements of the desert. The back of his neck rises up and he tries his best to keep himself as still as possible. Fear is something he is acquainted with. He has driven himself as its companion for ages beyond. In his soul, there is a strong tug, a dedicated line that Bakura had assumed only belonged to the sennen ring but with the sharp strikes from his heart, he is not so sure.

He shakes as he stays still. The tug pulls him, harder, much harder than he thought the insistent pull could. His knees all but buckle beneath him as he takes a step forward, then another.

"Bakura, come this way." The voice croons, echoing around him. A pathway between the walls that wasn't there before opens up in front of him. It is a hallway that continues down a path that he cannot see the end to. He tries to step backward, to fight, but the force that has made him come this far, pushes again, pressing him until the white-haired thief relents, following the drawing sensation from the center of his chest to wherever it will lead him into the darkened hallway.

He prays to whichever god will listen that he makes it back to Anzu. Brown-red eyes glance over his shoulder towards where he had been waiting. Anzu's coming out of the bathroom before the hallway closes off, shutting her from view to leave him only with a wall where she once was. Bakura swallows thickly, anxiety setting in, drifting further away from the brunette dancer with each pressured step.

With the hallway closing, light from the museum is gone, leaving him in pitch black darkness. Fear wraps him up, slithering into his gut and eating his insides. He exudes the cold. He doesn't know if its a minute or twenty years when a small flame appears in front of him. It illuminates the hallway, showing the stone walls that is written in Assyrian texts that flow so fast, Bakura finds that he can't even catch any of the words.

He takes a deep breath, tightening his hands into fists before taking another step forward, towards the small ball of flame floating in front of him. The flame is a soft blue, foxfire, Bakura reminds himself. He has heard tales of those who get lost chasing the shadow world but he has yet to truly be lost in it himself, though he had been possessed by Zorc Necrophades at his own free will.

When the flame circles around him is when the voices start, chimes of bells softly calling in the echoing hallway. They are whispers in languages, none that he recognizes and none that he can decipher in the tiniest bit. The whispers are of children, of women, of men of all different ages. All of them are too quiet, but the one thing other than eerie, is how much they are chanting together in their different tongues. With each step, the whispering is stronger, gaining strength with his momentum. More and more of the white-blue flames line up along the hallway, a trail to light the way, dooming him to follow for the darkness frightened him far more than the unknowing light.

"O my mother Nut, spread yourself over me, so that I may be placed among the imperishable stars and may never die." Ice encases Bakura at the soft voice, in ancient Egyptian that he understands. The tongue is old, but the prayer was one that had been said all too often by those he knew. It is a prayer of death, of crying out before Osiris takes the dying to Ma'at to be weighed by their sins. His breath catches with the start of a dawning realization.

He is in the realm of the dead, someplace he was technically already supposed to be in. Apprehension teases his gut, dancing on his nerves as the force that dragged him here, continues to push, insistent for him to keep going until there is a doorway, emptying into a bigger hall of nothingness. The push stabs into him again, too powerful for him to keep from following.

With a step over the threshold, there is a brightness in the darkness and one whole moment the world is filled with a golden warming light that quickly dissipates into a room, a room with a table and two chairs and another full-bodied man standing there. There are hieroglyphs dancing along the walls, too fast for him to read as souls flicker in and out of the area. It is the mere outline of people on the edges of an era that Bakura can only barely remember. A fisherman, a guard, a wife, all people who once were and now never will be again. The hieroglyphs date before Bakura's birth, crossing each other on the walls with little care for their legibility. The room is lit with orbs of light, brightening the area with a soft light blue glow.

Bakura gapes at the apparition standing opposite of the table in front of twinge in his chest, the pulling from each loud bump of his heart, disappears at the sight of the man in front of him. The man is cloaked in a long beige cloak, bundled to keep the length from dragging on the marble floor beneath them, head wrapped in a turban. Familiarity worms itself into his mind. He knew this man, knows him now as the last of the tomb guardians, the only guard left from when Bakura once reigned.

Shadi stares at Bakura with unseeing sky-blue eyes, the eyes that goddess, Nut, had given him from the stars in the night sky. There is no emotion behind them as they rove over Bakura's form, nodding once satisfied to whatever unanswered question he was asking. He is being judged and he knows it.

"How interesting to see you again, Shadi." Discomfort courses through the once great thief king of Egypt as Shadi has yet to take his eyes from Bakura's form. Meeting Shadi has always been disastrous for Bakura, even more so now than before since now Bakura did not have Zorc possessing him. The bravado and arrogance from before has left him a vulnerable man.

"I doubt that you are amused." Shadi moves towards one of the floating souls, holding the warming spirit in his hand. The guardian of the sennen items says nothing as the soul floats away before disappearing into the ancient pictographs on the wall. The silence crawls under Bakura's skin, singeing it from the inside as a flash of irritation crosses his face.

"If you have nothing to say, I will be going." A growl clambers from the thief king's chest, as he bares his teeth in displeasure at the the guardian spirit. Shadi has always been a mystery in and of itself. The first time Bakura ever saw him was after he had been sealed away in the tomb of the Pharaoh. He could feel Shadi, who at the time had been sacrificed by Siamon after the death of Tutenkatem, rise to the spell that Siamon had called out.

"You will not be going anywhere just yet." The sennen guardian settles to sit down on one of the chairs at the table, pointedly looking up at Bakura. Swallowing, Bakura follows his lead, sitting down in the chair opposite, knowing a threat when he heard one. The spell for Shadi was a double-sword for the spirit, one that Bakura had learned right before he had been sent into the chasm with the sennen ring. The ancient soul was tied to the sennen items, a judge for the ones who held them, and mostly a guardian to ensure their safety until the Pharaoh dismissed him back to the underworld. Staring at Shadi in wonder, Bakura realizes that Shadi was under that same contract, a contract that could never be fulfilled.

The Pharaoh had gone into the afterlife, never dismissing Shadi, never releasing the spirit from the bonds that Siamon had placed upon him when he took the kingdom from Tutenkatem.

"You're stuck in this in between." Bakura whispers the words, having them come unbidden as his thoughts form about Shadi's eternal imprisonment. Maybe that was why the sennen ring was still around, still working when it should have been lost to the earth like all the others, the thief king muses.

"Your bond with the Mazaki girl." The Thief King had no idea if he struck a nerve with the ghost of his past, but Shadi's immediate phrase about Anzu seemed to tell him that he had. Bakura wants to tell him that she was not to be talked about. Anzu was Anzu and whether or not they had a bond or whatever it was at the moment, definitely did not include Shadi and his mysticism. The thief didn't question it and so why should Shadi?

"What about it?" He growls towards the spirit, crossing his arms across his chest in hopes of looking rightfully intimidating. If Shadi was scared, he didn't show it. The guard holds another wandering light blue spirit in his hands, the soul of some poor man speaking in Persian. Glimpses of the man he had once been flickering to life.

"Is it going well?" The guardian flicks the wisp away, unamused by whatever he had seem to be seeking. Shadi could have very well been asking about the weather at this point with the placid way he brought up Anzu but Bakura knew better. His instincts cut into him and his hackles were rising quickly.

"What does Mazaki have to do with this?" Apprehension slides from the tips of his fingers to his arms, freezing his veins as Bakura desperately hopes, hopes probrably for the actual first time in his afterlife, the strange thing that it is, that Shadi tells him that Anzu Mazaki and all five foot, eight inches of her is safe from whatever Shadi has to do with him.

"Everything." The sound of satisfaction leaving from Shadi's lips leave no question to Bakura that the tomb guardian is taking well-measured, possibly very human, pleasure from the Thief King's anxiety when it comes to the dancer he has found himself tied to. Before Bakura could even ask what Shadi means exactly, as everything is in fact a fairly broad term to begin with, Shadi talks on as if he never stopped. "You were vanquished back into the ring before the duel between Atem and Yugi."

"I kind of got that from talking with Mazaki." His reply is short as his temper seems to be heading towards. The Guardian tilts his head, blue eyes set on staring through Bakura.

"With Atem gone to the Underworld, almost all of the sennen items lost their powers." Shadi's voice is a quiet calm that comes with the empty halls at night. He is the very definition of unperturbed, something that Bakura is beginning to envy more and more as Shadi's starting to grind on his nerves, nerves that are already sizzling from the deep-rooted fear surrounding him.

"I would assume they would." Scoffing, the spirit looks away from Shadi, watching the scrolling letters and phrases, all in languages so old or foreign that he is unable to translate. He swears that he can see parts of people he knew but he knows that shouldn't be. Shadi has him in the realm of the dead, right where Bakura actually belongs.

"Except for the Ring." Trying not to gape, the Thief King turns his head back to look at the guardian who is contemplating the thief's reaction. Bakura swears to see Shadi smiling the smallest twitch of a smile.

LLLL

Having inadvertantly lost Bakura, Anzu searches the exhibits trying to find him in a mess of people with all different colors of hair and tiers of height. Her own height gives her little more than the ability to peak over half of the people in the crowd and the need to take a rest eventually makes her escape the main exhibits to one of the museum cafes.

Anzu takes a seat away from everyone else, feeling the impact of too many people in one area take its toll on her. Without Bakura at her side, the dancer feels as if she is too cloistered in the building, surrounded by so many she doesn't know and way too many that press against her. The need to find space to breath is far too overwhelming and the alarming thought of Bakura having kept those feelings at bay when they went into so many places filled with people is a first.

"Is this seat taken?" Anzu blinks at the familiar accented voice before she gawks in surprise.

"Ishizu!" She gasps outloud, nodding quickly towards the chair that Ishizu Ishtar, the museum's curator, is resting one of her hands upon, indicating for the ex-tomb guardian to take it. Ishizu smiles with a soothing aura that exudes from her, much like the warmth of sunshine on a summer's day. Anzu can't help the feeling of smiling back.

"Ms. Mazaki. It is good to see you." Ishizu sits down with a water bottle in her hand that she sets on the table. Anzu takes a moment to take in the former tomb guardian. The last time she had seen Ishizu, the Egyptian was clad in beige robes, dirty from the battles they had all endured and holding onto her brother's hand as they were leaving to head back home, worried sick over him.

That world seems so distant now that she takes in Ishizu's calm demeanor and clothing. It is the first time Anzu has seen her in western clothing, a blue and white blouse patterned with silver symbols, and black high-waisted slacks. Her hair is braided and still so long with a golden ornament intertwined with it. Her cheeks are vibrant, Anzu muses, and the worried look is far gone from Ishizu, giving her the feeling of being far older and wiser than Anzu has ever thought herself to be.

One of the cafe workers flags Ishizu's attention for a fleeting moment. Faced with this woman who is known, popular and respected after the attempts by her brother six and a half years before, Anzu can only find herself to be in awe. Looking at her strong profile, Anzu is left to wonder if she would ever be strong enough to continue her work if something like that had happened to her brother.

"I'm so glad that you weren't in the riots." It's the truth and Ishizu smiles at that. There are a lot of reasons for Anzu to have wished otherwise but for now, the Ishtar sibling is satisfied with this. With everything going on, Anzu didn't want either of the siblings to be caught up in the chaos of what they were calling on television the Egyptian Spring.

"We just missed them actually." Ishizu states the fact, smiling wryly, a small upturn of her lips at the truth.

"You did?"Anzu leans forward, wide-eyed as she listens.

"Yes. We were bringing some artifacts out of Egypt to here, actually." Ishizu nods, taking a long sip of her water as the noise around them seems to have dulled. The cafe is a haven during the busy times of the museum, something that Ishizu has seemed to treasure as the cafe workers nod at Ishizu in greeting before going on with their bussing.

"Oh, wow. That must have been a stroke of luck." Anzu murmurs this but Ishizu hears and gives her a rather disarming look. Anzu Mazaki is simple but has always been a forthright personality, something that Ishizu has a hard time looking at. Mazaki reminds her too much of Seto Kaiba, the CEO of Kaiba Corp., the funder for her archaeological digs, donator for the museum in Domino and her exhibits, and a major pain in her ass at times concerning the budget.

"Perhaps it was." Ishizu pauses, not wanting to really talk about the elephant at the table. Anzu and her have talks, but more often than not, it's simple catching up and nothing too big to think upon, but seeing the look on Anzu's face from when she had entered the cafe, Ishizu felt that perhaps she shouldn't bring up their common past. "Are you enjoying the exhibit?"

"Yeah, I am, actually. You made it more kid-friendly this time." The time before is when Anzu and Atem visited the Domino museum. It hadn't been as interactive and filled with noise, mostly things put on display with descriptions hiding most of their true purposes and history. Ishizu seems to glow in pride at the comment.

"That was Malik's suggestion. He thought more kids would want to learn about the past if it wasn't so much just facts." She smiles at the memory of her troubled little brother making comments on the exhibits he had helped set up with the others. His grumbling had earned him an earful but once he actually spoke his mind out loud to Ishizu and the other curators, she realized he had been right. Kids needed to be engaged. Noise, lights, and things that brought forth amazement is what brought children to learn. Malik mentioned it had made him want to learn too when he was younger.

This last exhibit had been progress from the last six years, something Ishizu was truly proud of.

"I'm surprised." All of that pride at her brother's progress immediately became an edge at Anzu's thoughtless words.

"There is more to Malik than his illness." The curator's sharp words gave Anzu pause before she realized what a blunder she had made. Ishizu was protective of her brother even more than before, especially when it came to talking about his mentality.

"I-I didn't mean it like that." Quickly, Anzu waved her hands and shook her head as the weight of her words hit her and the probable misunderstanding. "I just meant that it is surprising he gave one. Last time we talked he wasn't as forward with anything."

"He has his days still but he has been getting better." Ishizu's eyes soften from the glare she had been preparing to give Anzu. Her fingers play idly with the straw in her water while memories of the hardships with her younger brother's progress flash across her mind. There are some days Malik finds it frightening to come out of his room. His door is kept open and there is always at least two lights on, something he can't seem to live without.

"I see." Ishizu looks up at the brunette with a moment of wonder. Does Anzu find herself in need of to make a mark on calendar, double check her wallet and her clothing to make sure it's her choices and her way of showing herself that she is alright, not possessed? The curator doubts it as the ballerina does not in any way seem as if she needs to do things in a certain manner, a certain way, much like Malik finds himself doing. She can only assume such as Anzu, if she does, never has spoken of anything of the sort.

"Ms. Mazaki, I know it will be awhile before he can face what he has done to you and to the rest, but he is working at getting better." The long road ahead for Malik is treacherous, full of footfalls and passages that are too rocky to traverse without help along the way, help that Ishizu has been trying to provide for years. The few guardians that are left have no one in their groups that are psychologists, that can understand the hazardous alter ego that the sennen items created, that their own group imposed upon her young brother's psyche when he was so young.

Malik's journey at the moment is keeping track of himself the best he can with as little stress. When Ishizu comes home, she can find it in disarray, Malik sitting in the center of the dining room floor, having pushed the small breakfast table they share into the kitchen, surrounded by journal entries. He can be laughing or crying, but whichever it is, it is the sound of someone lost and keening for help. She can find him quietly reading or trying to work on the motorcycle parts he shines and shines before he decides to put it together. Every day it is a guess. Sometimes the medicine works and she sees her brother. Other times, it doesn't.

"I know." The heaviness blankets the two of them in silence as both think on Malik Ishtar and his impact, the trials they have both faced and the ones that Ishizu continues to.

"How has Sugeroku been? Last that I heard, Yugi was playing in an international tournament to pay for his grandfather's stay in the hospital." Ishizu breaks the silence with thoughts of the young man that periodically sends her an email on the weekends. The tournament she knows is from Seto Kaiba's boasting email that he was going to put Yugi Mutou down to second place. The difference between the two made Ishizu glad to know both. Seto Kaiba is a guarded man, ambitious, and wanting to find ways to help those like him find success despite horrible beginnings, though he had his sweet moments too. Yugi Mutou is a kind soul, even kinder with how much good will he has for her younger brother and her.

In the years that have passed, the boy has kept her apprised of anything that has happened in his life, perhaps in thanks for helping the Pharaoh that had possessed him during his teenage years, whilst it was trapped in the sennen puzzle. Ishizu has never really questioned his goodwill. She learned quickly, that whether or not she replied to his emails, he would always send another. She had decided long ago that it was nice to have a friend who knew everything about her brother, his issues, and her. The only other person who had been as much of a friend in that manner was Seto Kaiba, but his emails were perfunctory and filled with only matters concerning either her archaeology pursuits, or about Mokuba. He didn't do emotion-filled prose.

Ishizu assumed it was simply not his way. He always asked her about something, leading to a reply email, most to deal with Mokuba. The curator knew that Kaiba had the entire internet at his disposal and could fund anyone to be an advisor when it concerned younger brothers, but the fact that Seto Kaiba found himself sending her emails about his brother always made her smile, because in a small way, Kaiba cared about her opinion.

Not that she was going to let him know that she knew.

"He's on an upswing. He's been pretty much stable enough for Yugi and Rebecca to leave the house for a few hours from the latest tweets from Rebecca." Anzu gives Ishizu a warming smile as she pulls up Rebecca Hawkin's twitter account with a picture of her and Yugi at a local ramen restaurant, close by Sugeroku's home.

"I'm glad. I know that Sugeroku is very dear to Yugi." Dear is an understatement. Ishizu knows that Yugi would give up all he could for the very man who taught him so much about life, who raised him and treated him as a son when his mother was unable to care for him. The curator knows the feeling all too well when hopelessness is the only companion in watching someone's decline. Unlike Malik, Sugeroku will never actually get better and stay that way.

He is frail and everyone whispers the truth. Sugeroku Mutou is dying. Yugi can't think of the words, can't say them out loud, but it is there, plain as day.

"Yeah..." For Sugeroku, there is only comfort left.

LLLL

With Shadi's declaration, Bakura wants to ignore every bit he has heard. The sennen ring is active enough that he is what he is now, but he has no idea what to actually to think about it, about what it can do and mean for him, for Anzu. To question his existence is not what he's ready to face, but with one look at the other spirit, he has no choice. It is time to face the proverbial music.

"The souls that made up the sennen ring are that of Kul Elna." Shadi speaks as if there is nothing wrong. He intones facts that are true to his world in the realm of the dead. Kul Elna is an echo, a place from so long ago the sands had devoured the last charred remains before Bakura had grown old enough to have a beard. He can no longer remember any particulars that belonged to Kul Elna, other than its destruction."The reason that you have resurfaced is because of the wish of your people."

"Kul Elna was destroyed three thousand years ago." It is harsh whisper taken from Bakura's chapped lips. The flash of flames, too hot to breath, stealing the oxygen from his dry mouth, taking what the desert hadn't already stolen during the day is all too real in that moment. Kul Elna of huts that were cool in the evenings, buildings filled with his past, his people wraps him in its final moments. There is a thunderous wave, rhythmic hooves against the hard packed dirt. He knows it's the Pharaoh's men. The sound of their weapons hitting their thighs with each weighted hoof beat against the sands beat into his bones, sapping him of any strength. He is no longer three thousand or so years in the future, but seven years old, hiding behind the back of a building that is on fire. The dreaded gold clinking comes to a stop as the deep, rich voice of Pharaoh Atemkahanet resounds just as powerful and shaking Bakura's core as before. His search for more power through the sennen items was insatiable. Kul Elna, with the rumors of the white-haired citizens being people with secret powers, was an easy target for the Pharaoh.

Shadi has no words for Kul Elna's destruction as it plays out on the walls around them. Surges of heat brush along his robes, doing little to disturb him. This is Bakura's memory and one that the tomb guardian can not twist to different circumstances. The tomb guardian watches the dying embers and soot coat the golden bits of earth as the sun rises behind Bakura in the memory.

"Without the presence of the Dark One, Bakura," A shiver treads down the Thief King's spine, playing upon the unspoken name that Bakura cannot draw strength from anymore. Zorc Necrophades, a monster of darkness that had taken him over, grabbed him into the shadows and never let him go until his defeat by Yugi Mutou in a shadow game. The familiarity of the spirit orbs and constant whispers bring Shadi back to focus from the memory that played out. "the magic of the ring has awakened fully."

"The souls that were used to make the sennen ring have recognized you as one of their own." A quizzical expression flits across Bakura's face. The implication is all but stated. The souls of the sennen ring are of Kul Elna. The people he cannot name, those he cannot fathom bringing forth as they are lost forever to everyone except perhaps Shadi and the realm of the dead.

"It was awakened when I was with Ryou." Bakura knows that he's not even completely convincing himself, let alone Shaadi. His voice wavers as the idea of Kul Elna having been taken for this reason, for the selfishness of one Pharaoh, but even more, the idea that Kul Elna survived in some way, some fashion is even worse.

"Tell me, Bakura, do you yearn for the death and destruction of those around you? Do you feel urges to destroy the emotions of those you know? To toy with them if only to gather information for your ultimate goal of retrieving the sennen puzzle and to kill the Pharaoh's spirit?" Shaadi's inquiry is as measured as the scale of Ma'at. His intonation is clinical, dripping almost with detached condescension.

"...Not any longer." He knows that any of those feelings have left him. He can remember the rage, the ever blinding need that tugged often in his soul to go after the Pharaoh. It had been his one ambition for three thousand years. The feel of his bones drinking in the anger, the desperation to get revenge for Kul Elna were now faint memories. Anger is so far removed from him. He doesn't even get annoyed with Anzu's chatter as he watches her practice in the apartment her stretches, pirouettes, and plies or the constant background noise of the city around them when they walk.

"Not since you reappeared after these six years."The Tomb Guardian reads off history that Bakura has kept quiet, to himself. Bakura is no longer listless, apathetic to their situation, but neither is he trying to do more. If there is anything left in him, it is no longer sparked by the ambition he once followed during the years he was with Ryou. "The Dark One suppressed the souls of the sennen ring, just as he used you to do his bidding."

"You must make a choice." Shadi continues talking as Bakura feels the coldness seep into him at that phrase. Zorc Necrophades had said the same. The images did not play, would not play against the backdrop of the ever changing pictograms as the Dark One had been all but swallowed by the cosmic hells of an underworld he now lived his undeath in. Bakura's memories resound with words instead. The murmur of something so inhuman makes his skin tingle with fright. He knows what its saying, but it won't replay the conversation fully.

He hears his acceptance to the gargled mass of tongues that he knows the words to, but the world of the dead won't decipher it, bring it to clarity. Bakura swallows from the knowledge that he had answered the darkness and it had claimed him with its promises.

"Great. I've been spectacular at those all my life." He had said yes to Zorc's promise of revenge, of full destruction for Pharaoh Tutenkatem's line, for the gods to fall to the earth and to never rise again, only for the promise to be partially unfullfilled as Tutenkatem was a clever man and an even cleverer player of the shadow games.

"The sennen ring's powers will bring you back to life if you want to, after wards, it will become nothing more than a decoration." Shaadi's declaration gives Bakura pause at the words. He would become real? He would exist past mere touches from Tutenkatem's best friend. He would actually breathe and experience the life he had once forsaken. He would and could do so much without his anchor to the physical realm.

Bakura stopped himself from thinking further into any sort of plans he could make, anything he could follow through.

There was always a catch.

"And what if I don't want to?" He hesitates. His voice is small, wary and scared. Freedom to be again, is a hope that he has only found in himself recently. With Anzu's fingers bringing him to reality, sharing coffee and general outings with her, Bakura desires more and more of the outside world in a way he never did with Ryou. She brings him to experiences that seem so mundane, that Bakura can't help but find the extraordinary in them.

To have that hope dangled in front of him in such a way is cruel if there is more attached, the hidden context in the line of a contract that he can't help but read past to the bottom line.

"Then you will disappear and go into the underworld where you will await judgment." The Tomb Guardian, unphased, speaking with facts only. If he is to disappear, if he is to finally go to the place that he is supposed to have gone so many eons ago, then, what would happen to the one person who is with him?

"What about Anzu?" Anzu brings the light into the world. She laughs and it doesn't set him on edge immediately. If he is to live again, would she be there? Would she hold his hand and take him on a long trip to some beach where the sand is finer than the coarse grains he was used to? If he chose to follow his original fate, would she even remember him? Would she eat breakfast by herself and wake to nothing but the bare twilight of an early morning without speaking a word to anyone?

Even with her in mind, choosing to live or choosing to die was a decision that Bakura was not sure to make.

"She will remember everything. The ring recognizes the descendants of Kul Ena." Shaadi shrugged at Bakura, not inherently caring about the thief's dilemma as he just was, embodying a time that no longer existed.

If Anzu remembered their time together, Bakura was not sure which option was crueler. Looking at Shaadi, staring through the timeless ghost that he was, the thief chooses the unheard of option.

"I cannot decide this." He speaks truth and it burns like brandy on his tongue, ashes in his throat. The souls of his people want to give him a chance to change, to become and he doesn't even know what he really wants. He wants a chance at life, but what chance is there really? He doesn't technically exist. He shouldn't even exist.

"The magic of the sennen ring will fade by December this year, Bakura. You have until then." Bakura grits his teeth at the reprieve of time, but what would change? What can change? He stands up and the world spins. It teeters out of place until his vision adjusts. He is standing on the other side of the wall in a gift shop. The noise from children and parents tittering about, looking at educational toys and well-crafted replicas of Egyptian art make his head spin.

Shaadi is nowhere to be found.

LLLLLLLL

"Ishizu, do you mind if I ask a question that may be insensitive?" Ishizu stops mid-chew of her club sandwich with turkey, instead of ham and bacon, to shake her head at Anzu's sudden question. They had been eating in silence as soon as the food had arrived, after talking about the most solemn of topics, Sugeroku's illness.

The darker woman waits expectantly for Anzu to begin. The brunette is staring hard at the sandwich in her hand, as if it held a puzzle to be solved before slowly speaking.

"Do you ever wish to have the excitement from before?" Her query is only met with a stunned gaze. Ishizu thinks upon the words but there are so many meanings, so many different particular items she might be speaking of for their past is complicated. All of Yugi's friends gifted part of his journey has found complications in their stay with him.

"What do you mean?" Anzu takes a slow sip of her drink.

"I was with Yugi for years as we ended up in one strange event into another without barely a chance to rest. When Yugi faced Atem and the sennen items disappeared, that all came to a stop." As Anzu thinks on the past six years, time hits her with all the change that has happened. "Everything sort of did. We went back to Domino City, to school. All of us finished our third year and graduated." She can remember the pink blossoms in the air as the five of them, Yugi, Jou, Ryou, Honda, and herself held up their diplomas, posing for Sugeroku and Yugi's mother to get them in frame for a picture that Anzu had on a shelf at her home. "I got a scholarship to Juilliard. Yugi's going to college for game design and dueling competitively. Jou and Mai got married." The blush of Jounouchi's cheeks when Reina had been born their second year as he got down to beg Mai to marry him for Reina's sake if any one's was a memory that burned brightly. As soon as Jou had learned about Reina, he became determined to be nothing like his own father.

"Jou works at the card shop when he's not dueling nationally. Honda joined the American Navy in Okinawa right after graduation." Honda's running away to the navy had been a surprise to everyone. He had laughed it off when Anzu had thought it might have to do with Miho marrying some college boy in Tokyo University aiming to be in the political diet. Now and again, Anzu was tagged in group emails where he talked about his current crew, mentioning some of the sights he saw on his off days. His instagram account was full of food though; some he cooked and many that he found in the streets from the local shoppes. "He's stationed in Naples right now. Ryou's in London working under Kaiba for Monster World. Then there's you and Malik, travelling the world while holding exhibits. The only person who's unchanged it seems is Kaiba and Mokuba."

Anzu's long winded lament brought up only slight confusion as Ishizu found the changes for her, from constantly fearing her brother's enmity when it sharpened on her to his casual annoyance with her in general, to the state that he was in now and their regulated home life and regiment of medications and therapies that she was working on with him to be a near godsend. The nights of fear and feeling of cloistered by the tomb guardians in charge were no more. She was left with her brother in her charge and only a passing note to her superior guardians from time to time were the only ties for them to their once locked childhood.

"You miss the danger?" The curator quizzes Anzu, intent on finding the exact thing that the dancer is trying her best to express.

"No...It is just strange to think of. When you come back from an adventure, to the life of working to make your bills each month, it all seems so inconsequential." Finding the right way to phrase it, Anzu breathes a sigh of relief as she does realizes that everything from the time the sennen items dropped into the earth until she found Bakura sitting on the toilet bringing back memories of the time before, was mundane compared to their adventures.

Anzu learned how to survive in the forest, navigate caves, and even learned how to lockpick from Ryou, though now that she thought about it, that may have been Bakura. She found herself in so many situations compared to now. There was some excitement, but most, if any, dealt with who was visiting, what new programs were on the television, and how much she had left over from bills every two weeks.

Nothing to compare her skills against, to push her to the brink of almost losing her faith. It was all just so normal, as if their time at Duelist Island, Battle City, Noah's game, Bakura's past world, and Egypt had never actually happened to them. There were no more shadow games. The only type of person that even came after her now were just those who wanted her to perform or to get news about Yugi's personal life.

"Everything does, but I believe you must put it into perspective, Ms. Mazaki." Ishizu understood the forlorn glance in Anzu's eyes. She had it often when she was stuck behind a desk instead of creating new exhibits or working in her field at a dig site. Ishizu's drop from dueling, having taken her brother's condition into mind, was nothing she would change. It was something she would never miss as much. Those days and the damage that was done by Malik were past. Her brother and her were making strides to get through life together. "This is a new chapter of your life. You will always miss the older ones, but this is the now. You make the most of it."

"Thank you. I think I may have forgotten that." Anzu smiled softly, bowing her head in thanks as she finished up one half of her sandwich. She thought idly on the point that the curator was making. For being in the shadows half the time that Anzu had known her, Ishizu seemed extremely mature beyond her years, not that Anzu even really knew her age. She was practically as young looking as Rebecca in some lights, yet spoke as wisely as someone centuries old. "Ishizu, I have one last question."

"I am glad to be of help." Taking a bit of her fries and dipping them in a sauce packet, Ishizu inclined her head for Anzu to continue while she ate. Anzu seemed less hesitant before. She was more confidant talking to the curator, opening up slowly to the woman in the short time they were talking face-to-face.

"If one of the people that we ended up beating from so many years ago came back and was not like themselves, at least not in the way you remembered them, what would you do?" Swallowing her fries as she took in the question, Ishizu frowned. This was rather strange to ask her. If Marik ever came back to Ishizu instead of Malik, she really wouldn't know what to do. She had never known the entity that cursed her brother's mind as anything but full of guile and maliciousness even towards her.

"I feel this is something that has happened to you." Piercing her eyes at Anzu's, Ishizu tried to figure out where exactly this question was coming from. The dancer looked off to the side, shoulders hunching as she did. Embarrassment tipping her cheeks with pinkness as the dancer bit her lip.

"Hypothetically, maybe." She squeaked out, trying to look anywhere but at Ishizu's dark blue eyes for fear of spilling the beans about the spirit that currently haunted her. The thought of speaking up about Bakura made her feel uneasy. As far as she knew, she was the only one who could interact with him, who saw him.

"Ms. Mazaki, I would go with my instincts. Did they tell you that this enemy is still an enemy?" Ishizu took Anzu's relunctance to meet her gaze as a confirmation that this had happened. With the many people that had been against Yugi and his friends, even from the knowledge of some only from emails, an inkling of worry furrowed her strong brow. Was the young woman in trouble? Waiting for an answer, Ishizu held her napkin in a ball in her hand.

"No."Anzu shook her head firmly. Seeing Bakura as a phantom on the toilet had not caused her to hide from him, nor scream in fear. The want to yelp had been distinctly from the shock of someone else in the bathroom while she bathed. He had looked so lost and confused. There was nothing in him that sparked fear for her at that moment. It had been like when she had sat next to Ryou right after graduation, when he had more than enough of hearing Yugi, Jou, and Honda talk about their future plans with him before heading off.

His eyes were filled with emptiness and his face lacked any determination. Anzu remembered thinking that he couldn't harm her, that if even he had wanted to, she would not have seen it coming.

"Whatever you choose to do, my dear, will be up to you, but I would go with my heart." Seeing Anzu's jaw strengthen, Ishizu chose to not voice any of her concerns. If Anzu believed them to be a friend, who was she to state otherwise? Ishizu had never chosen to leave her little brother behind, never to blame him for their father's abuse, despite all logic telling her to do so. Logic told her repeatedly Malik could not be helped with the amount of anger and hatred his alter ego spewed and the maliciousness that was caused by him. She held out hope that he would mend, and as soon as he was away from the sennen items, his mind was doing better. She could see that reflection of hope, even if Anzu was not voicing it, in the dancer in front of her. "No matter how much logic you put into your decision, you will have to live with your heart's choice as well. It is better to go with the right choice from your heart than to coldly follow your mind."

"Thank you for the advice." Anzu smiled softly, bowing her head in gratitude, despite being in a different country. The curator let out a soft squeak as her phone chimed with a message from the assistant curator for the exhibit. Immediately, Ishizu stood up, giving Anzu an apologetic smile in return, collecting the last bits of her lunch.

"Do not be a stranger, Ms. Mazaki." Ishizu waves at Anzu, taking her lunch and disposing it in one of the bins. The curator finds that her words are the truth. This afternoon, even with the history of Malik's illness between them and the awful things he attempted and those that succeeded, had been a delight in her rather usual business of handling the day-to-day function of the museum's Egyptian exhibit.

Giving one last wave to Anzu Mazaki before Ishizu turns down one of the staff only halls, away from the cafe, she hopes that whatever seems to be weighing upon the dancer's shoulders, will ease itself into understanding.

LLLL

"Bakura?" The name escapes her lips in query as she peers past the last group of tourists who had left the building. If Anzu had to give a name to Bakura's appearance it would be shaken to the core. He looked fragile, ready to shatter at the barest hint of emotion. She swallowed, not understanding just why he was staring at her as if she were water in a desert. She steps forward towards him. That's all it seems to take before he flits his way through the crowd of people between them.

 _Anzu._ His mind whispers it desperately. He will not admit that he was afraid.

"Mazaki." He stops until he is standing in front of her. His body instantly becomes less tense as soon as Anzu smiles up at him, reaching over to take his shaking hand in her own. He didn't think he had been shaking, but as soon as her firm, warm fingers took hold of his, it stopped.

"I was wondering where you went to." She implies the question but just even thinking of the realm of the dead is enough to make Bakura want to hide. Shaadi might decide the realm of the dead was where he really belonged, as much as Bakura knew that he did belong there.

"I was scoffing at the Pharaoh they had on display." It is a lie. She frowns, head tilting but the rise to fight his words dies instantly at the sight of his unusually dark maroon eyes. They are faded, greyed out by something that has caused him to look disheveled, made him shake so much that he didn't want to give her any notion of what happened.

"Oh, be kind. They're dead. They can't look as good as you on a whim." It's a silly joke, almost pitiful but the relief Bakura tries to hide tells Anzu all she needs to know. Bakura doesn't want to tell her. She assumes it's something bad, has to be, if it has him actually feeling much more than amusement or apathy.

"As good as me?" He snorts, enjoying the playful banter between the two of them. The exhibits no longer matter. For him, at this moment, it's that Anzu is bringing him to reality. He can breath. His heart is beating. It's the physicality that astounds him, the magic of the ring surrounding him. He wants to say it is because of Anzu. He paused in his mind as he remembered something that had slipped past him when talking to Shaadi. Technically, Anzu was part of Kul Ena, a descendant. Did that mean it was her bringing him to life with the ring's help at her unknowing fingertips?

"Well, maybe?" The joking aside, the dancer kept her eyes on Bakura while they stepped out of the museum plaza. She hadn't gotten anything at the gift shop, having forgotten to do so while looking for the spirit currently holding her hand. Bakura seemed to have gotten back to his usual self rather quickly. The distant gaze disappearing from his eyes as he focuses on her instead.

"Nice to know that some dried up husk is no longer competition for your attention." She laughs, imagining a mummy actually trying to use a pick up line on her from his sarcophagus. Bakura snorts with her, a foolish smirk on his lips at her laughter.

"Funny, funny, Bakura." She pats his arm with her other hand, a soft smile on her face as they step towards the bus stop nearby, moving with some of the crowd from the museum. She asks the million dollar question that she has learned to dread slowly during her time with Bakura. "What do you want for dinner?"

"Steak." She groans, dramatically throwing her head back in annoyance. Bakura raises an eyebrow at her antics. He couldn't help it. He absolutely loved steak. The feel of the red meat cooked just right, with a tinge of pink in the middle and tender all around. He could feel the imaginary drip of juices down the sides of his lips to the bottom of his chin. Just the thought was enough to get his appetite going.

"Steak gets expensive!" Anzu cries out, looking up at him with a frown on her usually upturned face. It didn't help that Bakura seemed to only mildly like chicken. He found fish appetizing enough, but the enjoyment of steak, the pure attention he gave the red meat while eating it was enough to make Anzu feel like she was intruding on a private moment.

"You asked." Bakura grumps as they wait. Anzu taps her cheek with her other in thought as she tries to think of an alternative to the thief's favorite food. They had fish the previous night, mac and cheese with hotdogs mixed in for the night before that and steak from a local resteraunt the night before even that.

"How about pizza?" Anzu expects Bakura to give her a monosyllabic 'No,' and eat it anyway, like he normally did when she made any sort of food that he found either too puzzling to figure out what they are without explanation, or just because he didn't like it as much as he liked eating steak. Hamburgers were quickly becoming a favorite for lunch.

"As long as they have steak." Anzu gave him an eyeroll. Bakura's obsession with meat was going to murder her budget and cause concern from Seto Kaiba on her expenses. If she didn't allot things correctly in her paperwork, and made sure to go through Mokuba's assistant who was kinder and not as attentive as Seto's assistant was, Kaiba would make trouble for her.

"They have pepperoni." He shrugs, taking a moment to think about it. In Domino City, pepperoni was rare to eat. Ryou preferred sausage on his pizza while Domino City had been all about seafood otherwise and cheese. Being away from the musuem, away from Shaadi and his past on display, Bakura finally lets out a heavy sigh.

"Pepperoni then." Anzu smiles as the last of the tension from Bakura's firm hold on her fingers disappear. Ishizu's words from earlier come to mind.

Waiting at the bus stop in front of the museum, Anzu considers Bakura. She traces the fine strands of his hair down to his strong brow and almost aristocratic nose, to his plump lips, then lastly, to the scar that is a reminder that he is nothing she really knows. He is silver mined from the blood of the earth, refined in the roughness of the world and she draws a deep breath as it dawns upon her. If this is to be the next part of her life, the next part of her journey, she sees her answer clearly in front of her.

When the bus eventually comes, Bakura and Anzu step in, together.


End file.
